Back to School

你们好朋友们! Sorry that it's been a while since I posted. As you can probably tell from the title. classes have started and life here has gotten really busy. Since my last post lots of exciting things have happened. I'll try to give a really brief run-down here.

Two Sundays ago, a group of friends and I headed over to the Lantern Festival here in Beijing. The Lantern Festival is always held 15 days after 春节 (Spring Festival/Chinese New Year) and, from what I can tell, it's a time to get together as a society and celebrate chinese culture through traditions like fireworks and lanterns. So we rode the subway for about 30 minutes to the are where the lantern festival was held. Getting on and off the subway was an adventure because it was super crowded. My group use me as a plow simply because I'm the biggest one. Let me tell you, dragging 8 外国人 (foreigners) through a subway car and subway station gets a ton of weird looks. And then when we emerged from undergound, the crowd was even worse than in the subway station. It felt like all 1.4 billion Chinese had showed up for the lantern festival. Once we had gotten our bearings, we wandered around the area for a while looking for the lanterns. However, that day, the Air Quality Index was over 500 (150 being the recommended limit for going outside in the US), and we didn't find out until we had wandered around for a few hours that the actual lantern show was cancelled due to the smog. Shortly after we found out, we fought our way back through the subway and headed home, because we had class the next day! Here's some pictures from the Lantern Festival:

The gate going into the Lantern Festival

One of the allies we went down

A giant "chun", the character for Spring

Happy Confucius

Whatever this is. It looks cool.

Guards trying to control the crowd

Some of the few lanterns we got to see.

After being out of school for over 2 months, classes finally started up on February 25. As for my schedule, four days a week I have 汉语(writing and reading) and 口语(speaking). Two days per week I have 听力(listening comprehension) and on Mondays I have a 3 hour area studies class on traditional Chinese Philosophies such as Daoism, Confucianism, etc. Each class (besides the area studies) is 1 hour and 50 minutes, with a 10 minute break half way through and a 20 minute passing period (which is totally necessary, because the campus is HUGE). So despite having class for 7 hours some days, I thoroughly enjoy being back in school. Also, I have quite the variety of students in my classes. For example, in my speaking class, there are 3 Americans (including me), 3 Japanese, 1 Korean, 1 Taiwanese, 1 French, 1 Italian and 1 from Kazakhstan. My reading class is kind of the same, with about 4 Americans, 3 Swedish, 1 from New Zealand (who is a good friend of mine), 1 from japan, 1 from Taiwan, 1 from France and 1 from Belgium. It’s really interesting talking with all of these people during and between classes. They have a lot of questions about American culture, just like I have about their culture. And I’ve learned that some knowledge that I take for granted and always thought was common sense, I have to try to explain to some of these people that I meet. It’s really been a humbling experience so far.

Thursday the 28^th was a really interesting/exciting day. We had an AQI over 500 (the highest so far) AND a dust storm, all in the same day! I was out getting lunch when the dust storm first hit and my friends and I had gravel bouncing off our faces and grit getting into our eyes. But the funny thing is, the dust storm settled down in about an hour and it blew all the smog out of the city, so the AQI was at 26 by the time I went to bed! Thursday night we took a trip to the Chaoyang theater and saw a Chinese acrobatic show! It was absolutely incredible. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, so I couldn’t take any pictures. We saw a lady juggling umbrellas on her feet, a girl doing pointe on the shoulders and head of a guy, 12 people on a bike at the same time (typical China) and 8 motorcyclists going around in circles in a giant metal hamster ball. Like I said, incredible.

On Friday, I had another interesting experience. I was at lunch with my friends Anna, Armida and Carol. Carol is on the same program as us, but she is probably in her 50s. She’s this little, adorable Taiwanese lady who immigrated to America about 20 years ago after graduating from the Taiwanese military academy and serving as a captain in their army. So she’s pretty BA. We call her the “Mom” of our program. And she’s pretty much fluent in Chinese. Anyway, we were at lunch and about to head out when Carol turned and said hello to some older guys sitting next to us. The said hello back and asked where we were from. We responded and then one of the guys stood up, shook our hands and started on this rant (Carol was translating) about how much he loves America and hates China and how he really wants to go live in America etc. He was so passionate about it that he started to tear up. That run-in with this fellow is in my top 10 most patriotic moments. Just made me so proud to be American.

Here in China, there is no drinking age, so I've been enjoying one or two responsible drinks on the weekend and, in tribute to Grandma, Weve and the rest of the Goebels, I had two grasshoppers last weekend. Let me tell you, those suckers are delicious. And for those of you wondering, the beer here isn't very good.

On Saturday we went to an area called Houhai where we got to ride a rickshaw through the hutongs (kind of like the ghetto, but safer ),

Eric and Nana in their rickshaw

 visit a traditional Chinese home,

The alter to the ancestors

The adorable lady who graciously allowed us into her home

climb up to the drum tower,

So. Many. Steps.

see the drums,

and witness the bi-hourly drum performance to mark the time.

This is a horrid picture, but I can't figure out how to 

upload the video I took. I'll show it to all of you sometime.

Afterwards, we got to explore the area a bit and go shopping. By the gate, there was this fantastic little, blind, old, homeless man playing the 胡琴 and singing his heart out.

I gave him 5 块, (which is less than a dollar, but still a lot in China) just because he was so awesome.

We returned back home, Sunday was uneventful, this school week has been normal and everything here is dandy!

Wednesday we did our first Target Language Themed Meal where a small group of students go to a themed dinner with a teacher, and are only allowed to speak Chinese the whole meal. Our group went to a restaurant where they served food from western China that is eaten predominantly by the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority here in China. Most delicious food I've had here in China.

On Friday the 8th, we're going to do Peking Opera traditional face-painting and traditional Chinese paper-cutting. And then on Saturday we're going to a local Autism Institute to volunteer for about 6 hours. Overall, I am thoroughly enjoying my time here in China! Lots of love being sent over the pacific ocean to you all back at home!