Beijing Life and Living
Wow. I can’t believe I’ve been here for two full weeks already!
It’s certainly been an action-packed adventure already. If I were to go home now, I’d still have stories for a lifetime!
All of us here at TBC have settled into our lives here in Beijing, although just as a pattern and not as a hard mold. The fact is, we can’t explore Beijing much because it’s too cold! Nobody wants to go wandering the hutongs or exploring around the hip neighborhoods because after just ten minutes of walking around campus to get to class, we’re shivering and shaking. Of course there are still indoors things to do, such as museums and galleries and meals (of course meals) but the majority of fun things college-age kids like us like to do such as going clubbing or going to karaoke are nightlife, so we’re spending our days watching television in the communal lounge and studying. It’s been pretty good, lots of bonding between the small group of us.
Of course, all this cold hasn’t stopped some of us. This weekend two groups of us, about fifteen total, went out skiing! I have to be honest, the ski hill is about two hours south of Beijing and if you’ve ever skiied before, anywhere, you’d be underwhelmed by this place. It’s made for beginners and nobody else. Still, it was a nice experience to be with my roommate and just a few other friends.
The internet here in China is not good, so unfortunately I can’t add photos right now, but hopefully in the future I’ll be able to come back and add to this.
The Beijing Center also offers lots of activities and fun things to do to get to know Beijing and China better, even more than Rome did. To begin with, we have our Chinese roommates, who know the city and the area very well. And TBC also puts on programs such as a Culinary Arts lesson where they taught us how to make southern Chinese dishes, taking us to the arts district with a semi-guided tour of its history, and watching Disney’s Mulan with the roommates to point out the cultural inaccuracies of the film. Still, it’s all in good fun, and didn’t lessen my love of the film one bit.
We’ve all gotten through a week of classes and internships now, and gotten a gauge of how they’ll be. I’m really looking forward to it, to be honest, because I think I will really learn a lot in every subject. I’m really loving Beijing. It’s been an experience and I’m sure it will be even more so as I move through the semester. Right now I’m looking forward to our trip to the southern (and much, much warmer) Yunnan province, because, as they say in China here, I’m 冷死了 – leng si le – freezing cold!