I finally have the internet in my room.
I guess I am now settled into my new life here at Beijing Language and Culture University. I can't say it is that bad. The university is certainly more pleasant than other parts of Beijing, here there is definatly the feeling of being in a campus environment. On the other hand, I still don't know what I am doing here. Although I have started to enjoy my life more and I have had some interesting experiences in the last weeks, few of these are directly related to being in China. Let me begin.
I am not accustomed to my class. There are 19 students, of which an average of 15 show up on any given day. The professor is a 30 year old Chinese woman with lots of enthusiasm but little teaching experience or familiarity with teaching theory. As a result, every day she prepares very nice, professional looking powerpoints full of sentences in Chinese for us to read aloud together as a class. We also do varying amounts of homework that usually consists of workbook exercises or writing short essays on corney topics such as "my responsabilities". In addition to her, we also have one other teacher for four hours a week. She is an older woman with much more teaching experience and a very personable demeanour. She teaches us reading by having us read short propagandistic stories for comprehention first, and then aloud individually. With both teachers, it is quite evident that they have never learned a foreign language as they seem oblivious of our weaknesses in learning. Apart from that, the classes are well paced and at the appropriate level for me to learn.
Outside of class, I can not say that my life is terribly exicting. First, the pace of the class requires me to spend time studying every day. Secondly, as I have not made that many friends, my social options are limited anyway. I have been spending a lot of time talking about China, Africa, and other things with my South African roommate (his stories are very interesting) and about China with the handfull of associates (one level below friends in my heirarchy) I have managed to meet.
The biggest event that has happened for me lately is the arrival of Neal. Neal is a friend of mine from back in Vancouver who I met though Milan. Before he got here, he had been working up in the interior of BC and before that, living the life of a ski bum up at Whistler. I guess he had been inspired by my stories of China and decided to come here for himself.
At first, things were a bit rough. He was staying with my sister's friends Catlyn and Alex, but he didn't seem to establish much of a relationship with them. After a week their patience for the stranger crashing on the couch wore thin and they asked him to leave. This spurred him to enlist my help in finding an apartment. After two days of moderate searching, he found a room in a shared apartment in the neighbourhood I live for RMB1500 per month. However, despite having housing, he is still quite lost in China and has been unable to effectively search for employment. This situation is unsustainable and hopefully with be resolved soon.
By far the most interesting events in my life lately happened on thursday and friday nights. On thursday, my roommate invited me out with his friends to go have dinner at a Japanese restaurant and for karaoke afterwards. The dinner was super fun. The dinner was mostly students at BLCU and the largest group among them was Japanese. Lucky for Neal, the lingua franca at the table was English except for the drinking chants which were all Japanese. As the night progressed, there were too many "Hashimotoseko"s going around and I got really drunk. So, rather than stay for karaoke, I stumbled home and went to bed. Neal, on the other hand, passed out in the karaoke room until 4am when everyone went home.
The next night, Chris, my American friend, invited me to dinner with his friends. We went to Chaoyang district, in the Dongzhimen area to a Beijing style restaurant (which are actually quite rare). This time, the crowd was almost entirely young Western and Indian graduates who were doing internships or entry level jobs in various sectors in Beijing. Most of them were members of Aisec, a business student's club that helps to arrange internships. This time, although we did not drink as much, the conversation was more interesting as I queried many newly arrived people about thier opinions of China (almost all were quite positive) and talked about the prospects for India with some very inteligent and elequant Indans. After dinner, we went to a bar where we had some more great "young and international" conversation about politics, China, and the best cities in the world.
The next night, I went out to Sanlitun with Neal, Alex and Catlyn. It was good times as we talked about life back home and met some nice people during the course of bar-hopping.
After the experience of these three nights I realised that right now Beijing has a real position as a hub in the international upwardly mobile youth demographic. This makes the city a very exciting place to live as there is the opportunity to interact with young people from all over the world who are doing interesting and exciting things. On the other hand, it is sobering because most of these people are here just because China is "hot" right now. Many of them speak little or no Chinese and are not much worse off for it. Further, throughout those three nights, there were no local Chinese present. There were always overseas Chinese who had come to either learn the language or work, but there were not any locals. The language and/or culture gap between locals and the globally conscious upwardly mobile young students and professionals is still evidently too big for there to be any real social interaction.
Right now it is the national holiday so everyone gets a week off. Most people, including my roommate, Alex and Catlyn, and Chris, have gone traveling however as I have neither money nor travel partners, I am still here in Beijing.
I also now have skype so if you want to talk to me, you can always add me and give me a ring.
Marc
I guess I am now settled into my new life here at Beijing Language and Culture University. I can't say it is that bad. The university is certainly more pleasant than other parts of Beijing, here there is definatly the feeling of being in a campus environment. On the other hand, I still don't know what I am doing here. Although I have started to enjoy my life more and I have had some interesting experiences in the last weeks, few of these are directly related to being in China. Let me begin.
I am not accustomed to my class. There are 19 students, of which an average of 15 show up on any given day. The professor is a 30 year old Chinese woman with lots of enthusiasm but little teaching experience or familiarity with teaching theory. As a result, every day she prepares very nice, professional looking powerpoints full of sentences in Chinese for us to read aloud together as a class. We also do varying amounts of homework that usually consists of workbook exercises or writing short essays on corney topics such as "my responsabilities". In addition to her, we also have one other teacher for four hours a week. She is an older woman with much more teaching experience and a very personable demeanour. She teaches us reading by having us read short propagandistic stories for comprehention first, and then aloud individually. With both teachers, it is quite evident that they have never learned a foreign language as they seem oblivious of our weaknesses in learning. Apart from that, the classes are well paced and at the appropriate level for me to learn.
Outside of class, I can not say that my life is terribly exicting. First, the pace of the class requires me to spend time studying every day. Secondly, as I have not made that many friends, my social options are limited anyway. I have been spending a lot of time talking about China, Africa, and other things with my South African roommate (his stories are very interesting) and about China with the handfull of associates (one level below friends in my heirarchy) I have managed to meet.
The biggest event that has happened for me lately is the arrival of Neal. Neal is a friend of mine from back in Vancouver who I met though Milan. Before he got here, he had been working up in the interior of BC and before that, living the life of a ski bum up at Whistler. I guess he had been inspired by my stories of China and decided to come here for himself.
At first, things were a bit rough. He was staying with my sister's friends Catlyn and Alex, but he didn't seem to establish much of a relationship with them. After a week their patience for the stranger crashing on the couch wore thin and they asked him to leave. This spurred him to enlist my help in finding an apartment. After two days of moderate searching, he found a room in a shared apartment in the neighbourhood I live for RMB1500 per month. However, despite having housing, he is still quite lost in China and has been unable to effectively search for employment. This situation is unsustainable and hopefully with be resolved soon.
By far the most interesting events in my life lately happened on thursday and friday nights. On thursday, my roommate invited me out with his friends to go have dinner at a Japanese restaurant and for karaoke afterwards. The dinner was super fun. The dinner was mostly students at BLCU and the largest group among them was Japanese. Lucky for Neal, the lingua franca at the table was English except for the drinking chants which were all Japanese. As the night progressed, there were too many "Hashimotoseko"s going around and I got really drunk. So, rather than stay for karaoke, I stumbled home and went to bed. Neal, on the other hand, passed out in the karaoke room until 4am when everyone went home.
The next night, Chris, my American friend, invited me to dinner with his friends. We went to Chaoyang district, in the Dongzhimen area to a Beijing style restaurant (which are actually quite rare). This time, the crowd was almost entirely young Western and Indian graduates who were doing internships or entry level jobs in various sectors in Beijing. Most of them were members of Aisec, a business student's club that helps to arrange internships. This time, although we did not drink as much, the conversation was more interesting as I queried many newly arrived people about thier opinions of China (almost all were quite positive) and talked about the prospects for India with some very inteligent and elequant Indans. After dinner, we went to a bar where we had some more great "young and international" conversation about politics, China, and the best cities in the world.
The next night, I went out to Sanlitun with Neal, Alex and Catlyn. It was good times as we talked about life back home and met some nice people during the course of bar-hopping.
After the experience of these three nights I realised that right now Beijing has a real position as a hub in the international upwardly mobile youth demographic. This makes the city a very exciting place to live as there is the opportunity to interact with young people from all over the world who are doing interesting and exciting things. On the other hand, it is sobering because most of these people are here just because China is "hot" right now. Many of them speak little or no Chinese and are not much worse off for it. Further, throughout those three nights, there were no local Chinese present. There were always overseas Chinese who had come to either learn the language or work, but there were not any locals. The language and/or culture gap between locals and the globally conscious upwardly mobile young students and professionals is still evidently too big for there to be any real social interaction.
Right now it is the national holiday so everyone gets a week off. Most people, including my roommate, Alex and Catlyn, and Chris, have gone traveling however as I have neither money nor travel partners, I am still here in Beijing.
I also now have skype so if you want to talk to me, you can always add me and give me a ring.
Marc
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