Bit by bit...putting it together

I am sorry for the lack of updatage, I tried to update this morning
but it deleted it, and then I had to go take a test real quick...so
this update will cover the last two days.

Saturday:
Yesterday, they told us to wake up at 8:00 am to take us on a
Supermarket run and a tour of the neighborhood. We walked from our
dorm on the west side of campus, through this underground tunnel
dealie and into the east side, through the east side until we came to
a place with a lot of street vendors and small stores. This place was
a lot more like what I had expected Beijing to be like, although still
perhaps more technologically advanced then I might have expected--
people selling stuff in their little shops, riding bikes all around,
people with horse-drawn carts of fresh goods like oranges and cabbage
and, yes, even some hanging red lanterns, Clay. However, amidst the
quaint folk were taxis "zipping" (I use this term loosely because
traffic is terrible and impossibly slwow) past us and nearly clippling
us as we walked by. This part of town had several small food vendors,
including a dumpling man who gave you like eight dumplings for like
2-3 kuai (which is like 30-35 cents) so kind of a sweet deal. The IES
'helpers' brought us to the middle of this chaos and told us to just
'Go!'-- gee thanks guys. I kind of wanted some dumplings and was
pretty hungry but my 100 kuai bills were too big for such a small
purchase so, with the help of my RA Steve who also went to UPS, I
bought a card of minutes for my cellphone from a magazine stand
nearby.

They then took us a little farther in and took us to the supermarket
called the ChaoShiFan, the people who needed cellphones only stopped
for a bit while the people who already had them stayed to shop. This
market was actually sort of like a Cub Foods/Safeway on top of a
Walgreens/CVS because it was two stories and the main floor had fresh
fruits veggies and meats and the basement had other random crap. The
first thing that struck me was that this store was extremely loud and
crowded (are we noticing a pattern?). As soon as we walked in we were
assaulted by two Chinese ladies toting cups of unidentifiable white
goo, yelling something I couldn't really understand but took to mean
EAT THIS, didn't though...not that adventureous yet. Again the IES
people said to 'Go!'--how very helpful. While I was there I bought a
three-pronged compatable extension cord (YESSSSS), Diet Coke with
Lemon (which I didn't notice until later--I should have noticed the
yellow cap), some hangers, and some ritz crackers. Today I went again
and brought back more diet cokes and other random crap--I think this
place will be much appreciated by me.

After coming back to the dorm for a quick stop to drop off our stuff
we headed back over to East campus for a boring lecture. After the
boring lecture we went to lunch with some of the language teachers and
orientation leaders, where we ate a LOT! I also started to notice
that choosing to wear my cute shoes instead of my functional shoes
was probably a dumb idea because I had blisters on my heals. While we
were at the restaurant though, I began to notice a sort of weird
dynamic between us (even the the teachers, not just us foreigners) and
the fuwuyuan (which can also mean waiter, or anyone in a serivice
position). During the meal, I witnessed what my western perspective
thought to be kind of rude. Whenever we wanted anything one of the
teachers would shout essentially, 'HEY, fuwuyuan, give us some rice!!'
I'd seen some of these same behaviors in the continuing students who
are our 'orientation leaders' but had written it off as just dumb. But
when I saw the teachers doing it too I stopped to think about it. It
seemed odd to me that a place that values filial piety so highly could
be so seemingly disrespectul to someone who serves them. It could have
been an age difference thing, or maybe in China this behavior is not
rude or disrespectful at all. Sort of along these same lines, when I
was in the supermarket, occasionally I would bump into someone and
would go to say, 'dui bu qi' (sorry) only to realize that they had
already moved on. I guess in China you really can't dwell on stuff
like that because its so crowded--people probably get bumped all the
time. We walked back to campus and I got to talk (in CHINESE) to the
Language director, Xiao Zhao Laoshi, she is very nice and when I was
done, this girl Sarah in my orientation group (who also likes singing
and wants to join a choir here) was all 'Omg you're Chinese is so
good' I guess I am improving already!

After this we attended a lot more boring crap and then had a 'Large
Group Mixer' where we went around the IES floor and played games and
had dominoes pizza--one of the pizza's had corn on it...weird. Just to
let you all know, I live on the 3rd floor and classes are held on the
4th, so essentially whenever I need to attend class I can literally
roll out of bed and go...this will be nice, I feel, with 4-hour
language class starting at 8 in the morning. It was fine, but there
really are a lot of people in this program that are really...socially
awkward-- maybe I'll just leave it at that for now... After that we
came back down to our rooms and some us wanted to go out, but realized
we had our language placement exam at 8 in the morning....yuck. So
instead we went out to a store and bought Tsingdao pijiu (beer) for
2.5 kuai/largeish bottle. We came back and drank a bit while playing
Kings Cup and bonded and talked until about 11:30 when we decided to
call it a night.

Monday:
Today I woke up probably around 5:30 or 6 because my legs and knees
hurt so badly and I woke up with a headache, just like the previous
day...so just like yesterday I took 3 ibuprofen and 1 vitamin...I am
hoping that this pattern doesn't continue because I don't have enough
ibuprofen and kind of don't want to deal with buying drugs in China.
After just lying in bed for awhile I got dressed and walked upstairs
for my placement test. I think it went ok, considering I hadn't
studied very much at all...especially my oral portion. However, the
last portion my head hurt so badly I could not pay attention to the
test so I just quickly wrote down the remaining answers and came back
downstairs. I went to the store agaiinand then came back for MORE
LECTURES. Really I do appreciate them all but sometimes I am so tired
I am simply not taking any of the information in. The one interesting
one was where we learned about our expectations for learning Chinese.
Once the program begins, we are expected to speak Chinese 24/7 and
will be observed by our RAs and teachers...this is where the whole
living downstairs thing becomes kind of whack. In addition to our
regular schoolwork (which btw, looks soooo hard) we sign a language
pledge saying we will to the best of our abilities speak no english
at all but there are 3 'english zones' upstairs where we can speak
it. Every week we will be evaluated on our performance in adhering to
the language pledge and it will count of 5% of our final grade
(buhhhh). The twist on it though is that we will be divided into 4
teams and will be 'competing for the gold' Olympic-style to perform
the best, we will all be assigned a color/country that corresponds to
one of the Olympic rings, the 5th ring/group/country is the RAs and
teachers who will be yellow and be the judges. We also have to wear
bracelets the color of our team and if we do not wear them we get
penalized....this is so summer camp it is almost silly. Hopefully it
is effective though.....

We also had a meeting about our trip to Yunnan province which will be
coming up pretty quick here. There are 3 choices, so if any of you
have opinions you are welcome to share them only I probably won't get
your suggestions until after I've chosen. The first choice is an
ethnic studies trip in Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is near the Napa
village. This was the last lecture of the day so I don't remember much
but this is an area that has a lot of Tibetan people, just like the
rest of Yunnan and we would be staying with their families and such,
and talking about Tibetan issues and whatnot. Although this seems
neat, you have to hike up and down the gorge...my knees say...this is
not cool, although there is a cheese making component and we would get
to help build a school for one of the villages.

Choice B is also an ethnic studies trip to Lugu Lake in Naxi, which is
about an hour from Napa, the cool thing about this village is that
its one of the world's last matrilineal (sp) societies, so the people
take their mother's last names and nobody know's who their father is
and just calls everyone uncle. This is also hiking (for 5 days with
camping--UGHHHHHHHHH) but it would be around a lake, so pretty flat
and also we will have shirpas who will follow behind us in trucks,
carrying our stuff and cooking food for us.

The last choice is a growth and development studies trip to the south
of Yunnan, where it is more tropical and warm (already liking
it...Beijing is soooo coooold). It concentrates on the Mekong and how
they are growing and changing economically. This also is the one where
you meet the Dai people (peacocks mommy!) Problem: 80 mile bike ride
around a huge ass lake. However, Ai Lao Shi (the director of the IES
beijing program) says that if we are at all worried about the
physicality of any of these trips--which I am given the current state
of my knees (the left hurts when i move, the right when i'm still)
that we should choose this trip and just skip the bike ride, because
its not used to get from one place to another just as an activity for
the day. Still, it would be kinda sad to sit by myself wishing that my
knees didn't hurt ( and could ride a bike...oops).

After our last boring lecture I came back cuz by then I could not go
up and down stairs comfortably at all and took my first shower in
Beijing and am now writing this...whew it is a doozy. I've met a lot
of people, but I'm not sure if there's anyone I would consider a
friend just yet...I suppose that will come with time. Mom and Dad and
Lucinda and Clay will be excited to know there is a girl named
Persephone...so cool! I promise I will put pictures soon, I've just
been so overwhelmed by everything I haven't been comfortable enough to
stand around and take picture...plus its really cold. Once I get the
shutter clicking, itll get more interesting I promise...

I'm trying...I'm scared...but I'm trying....

Leave me messages...I miss you all, once all this craziness is over we
will Skype...honest.