Monday, April 13, 2009

The Eastern Gate has more Eastern Things while the Western Gate has more Western Things

I'm finally in the city of Beijing at a semi-home base for the last 8 weeks of this program. Albeit, we actually are only here a week or so at a time with trips scheduled across China, but it's been good to unpack and get used to living in a non-hotel room for once. I'm really enjoying it here, despite the pollution and people hacking/coughing up a lung and spitting on the streets. I did have an interesting incident yesterday while in line at a street stall for food where an older man walked up behind me, hacked over my shoulder, and walked away again. The guy running the stall had a good laugh at me for probably 3 or 4 minutes though, which was a bit excessive.
We're living at the University of Business and Economics (UIBE) which is between 3rd and 4th ring road and close to a subway line. Everything here is either really cheap (eg a bottle of coke is 3 yuan or about 42 cents) or seemingly overpriced in comparison to stuff we've been paying in SE Asia. The University itself has 2 gates, one of which is near more western stores and one of which is more eastern oriented in food and stores and they are out the western and eastern gates, which I thought was funny.
Anyway, the night we got here, a bunch of us walked to a Japanese department store which was actually more expensive than at home and then we walked to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. Unfortunately, we got there at 9:25 and the lights are shut off at 9:30, so that was dissapointing, but I'm hoping to go back later and see it.
Our first full day here, we went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and Jing Shan Park, which where enormous and beautiful. A few of us went to Wangfujing Street, which is the high end shopping street in Beijing where I finally got a card reader to upload photos and then realized I didn't bring my mini sd adaptor. Sorry all, I'm working on it.
On Sunday (it's Monday night here), I went to an Easter service for foreign passport holders that was behind the Capital Building near the embassy district (where I also went today). It was pretty interesting going from hearing nothing but Chinese from the non-Carl students to having an entire service in English. I loved it, even though it was more traditional/structured than services I am used to attending. I actually sat by a guy who said he was from Cedar Rapids and then we met a woman who had a daughter that went to Carleton and was a SOAN major, which just proves what a small world this really is.
Today was our first full day of classes and by classes, I mean a 2 hour morning lecture on Politics and a 2 hour afternoon lecture on Economics with a break in between for lunch. It was so weird being back in the classroom though. I wasn't sure what to make of it and forgot how long 2 hours is when you have to take notes and pay attention to something. I think this will be really interesting though and am excited to put into academic context all of the things we are seeing in terms of economic and political history and policy.
I also opened a skype account and my name is: catherinek87
Add me!
More updates later, I promise.

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