On Monday my mama left to go back to the ATL. It was sad to say goodbye but not too sad since she left at 6 am and you all know what I'm like that early in the morning. I then packed up my stuff and moved into my new residence. I am living in a hotel for the next four months. We had the choice to either live in a on-campus dorm or off-campus hotel. Guess who chose the hotel?? The room is comfortable and about a 10 minute walk to my classes. Of course this 10 minute walk includes crossing three very busy streets which in Beijing means putting your life on the life. My roomies name is Cherrica and goes to Notre Dame. She's a super sweet girl and is reallllly good at Chinese so I am glad to have her as a roomie :)
On Tuesday we woke up bright and early to have orientation and meet everyone. This included a complimentary breakfast of sushi and sandwhiches. To say the least I didn't think I could stomach sushi at 8 am. Later on that day my roommate and I headed to the Target type store here. I was very overwhelmed by the mass amounts of people. The check out line was a good 20 people! Definitely something that is going to take a while to get use to. That night a group of us went to WuDaoKou which is where a lot of the bars are. We had a good time but nothing too crazy since we all had to wake up early today.
Today (Wednesday) we went to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. I already went there last week but thought it'd be a good chance to get to meet everyone. We were warned that because we were foreigners and many Chinese people have never actually seen Westerners (other than the TV) that we would be stared at/photographed. It was truly a crazy experience. Every time our group stopped for 5 minutes to listen to the tour guide there would be a group of people just snapping our photo. They also aren't scared to ask you to take a photo with their kids. We all just kept wondering what do they do with these photo's?? Later on we had a campus tour. I am attending the University of Beijing (BeiDa 北大) which is known as the Harvard of China (yeah don't ask me how I managed to pull that off..) The campus is very different than Boulder but I know it will be so beautiful in the spring.
Everyone in my groups seems really awesome. We take our language placement exam tomorrow at 7 am which will determine what level Chinese classes we can take. That should be interesting. The weather is a bit grey. I can't tell if it's just really cloudy or really polluted. Considering I blew my nose and black stuff came out today I think I'm gonna go with it being polluted. Hope my lungs can survive these next few months!
Anyways, things are great here other than feeling overwhelmed by the Chinese language. I've worked so hard to make it to this point but it's extremely frustrating when you don't understand anything. But I guess that means you just got to work harder!
Here's to placing above the elementary level on my language placement exam! Love you all.
Lauren
柯若兰
My bed for the next 4 months
Cloudy or pollution?
The Chinese paparazzi
My campus
The famous bagoda at Beida
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