Camping at the Great Wall? Check.

So Allie and I met up with Meg and we three took the 4 o'clock bus to the Great Wall. At the front of the bus is this crazy muscle man, dressed in form fitting black spandex with a crazy Norwegian accent (he had blond, blond hair and blue eyes, if you're wondering) and it turns out that he's, more or less, our group leader...

And he starts to tell us that the part of the wall that we are going to is not a public part, so we need to be quiet getting up there... And to be careful where you go because once he was run down by Chinese soldiers, kicked in the head, covered with a black mask and taken into interrogation for nine hours. Immediately, I wanted to go home, but it turned out all right in the end.

He had a thing against the States, though because he went through the whole bus (it was an international student thing, 200 foreigners and a crap load of a lot of countries) and just completely brushed the Americans aside. Now, I have an issue with that because, clearly, if I'm studying in China, I'm not the kind of american they generally think of. Jesus, I'm the kind that they should be interacting with for chrissake!

We finally get out of traffic and to the parking lot and its about 8:30... Luckily it was a full moon, so we walk up the mountain (I kid you not, mountain, I say!) for several kilometers. The path was fairly treacherous but the moon helped, as did my "torch" *dies*.

We arrive at the wall, this 8-foot wide (at best) ridge, with a 5 m fall to either side, drop our stuff and head off to explore. We explore up and we explore down. We found a ruined sentry post on the down side that was really cool because it was like our private part of the wall.

Eventually we meander back and are roped into helping--because we're helpful. So we head down the mountain to bring up more water and sleeping rolls and toliet paper--really important stuff, ya know?

We roasted veggies around the fire, made marshmellows... took marshmellow shots (we had not graham crackers, so it was "pop in a piece of chocolate and ripe that fucker off the stick and swallow, bitch"). It was so good. We also shared some beer with some Belgians.

Eventually it got really late and we all bedded down. Thor--the crazy Norwegian, as I named him--Meg, Rachel, myself and Allie... all in about a 4x6 square. We had to sleep sideways all together to fit and everytime someone moved, it was like the domino effect. But we had a really good view of the moon and the sun, after it broke the clouds in the morning.

The morning consisted for more scampering and romping, poisonous spiders, feral dogs, and me, making a mandatory "No, everyone MUST take one water or else someone--probably me--will have to carry the case down. And its heavy". I really don't get how some people think. It is some much easier for 10 people to each stuff one water bottle in a back pack than for one poor soul to have to have lugged it up and back down. Really.

The busride home was a nap-nap-nappy time. We showered, hit the noodle house (yumyum) and then I crashed like I died. I slept for 4 hours *sigh* Getting to bed tonight will be interesting... Although, I'm still really exhausted, so it might be easy.

Happy Mid Autumn Festival!

Make sure you all go and enjoy the moon sometime today! Zhen piaoliang!

Woke up early to go to lab; we ended up beating the graduate student there. Always a bad way to save face (for them). Did some basic preparations for the experiments on Thursday. Was treated like a talisman. Really, now. It was a little ridiculous.

Got four moon cakes, though: egg, ham and date! listed in backwards order of preference.

Thought I was going to kill Allie though because we were cleaning out flasks with this dry detergent-type solid and then after we put the flasks back, she flicks her soapy-water hands at my face.

Normally I am fine with this playfulness. Not in the lab. Never in the lab. And especially not in a Chinese lab. I pretty much sobered her up with a dead polite, "please do not flick soap water into my eyes..." Erg. Just frustrating. It was made even worse by the fact that AFTER we've washed these things, Yang goes, "Oops! We should wear gloves now!" Kill me. Because if you don't, I'll die a horrible death in this lab.

Managed to memorize almost the whole dialogue for the test on Friday. Generally I don't prescribe to the fact that route memorization is the best method by which to learn, but for China? I make exceptions.

Visited the BeiDa club fair and signed on to the animal rescue club. Accidentally, of course. I filled out all the information before I remembered that all the clubs here require deposits. Ah well. I got book marks and a paw-print pin out of it. Save the cats!

Allie is keeping a gecko in her room, hiding it from her roommates. I don't blame her; would much rather have a gecko than a solid bug population.

Celebrated the moon festival at the Old Summer Palace. There were lanterns and everything! It was very pretty. I'm going to upload my pictures shortly:

http://picasaweb.google.com/JennFantasia

Enjoy!

Is that all I am to you?

Please witness the sorts of emails I receive...

Jenn:

I am just about to mail you the laboratory work tomorrow. Well , I will do most of the tests at Thursday so for tomorrow I will do some preparative work, make several reagents and clean beakers, conical flasks.

I can handle it myself, but if you want to join , you can come around 9 am. I want to finish this as early as possible.

PS: One of Jenn's plate had a very clear decolor ring , that's wonderful. So I really want you to join my experiment on this Thursday. Cause it seems that you are very luck at experiment.:)

And wish you have a good day tomorrow~

Really, I'm nothing but a lucky rabbit's foot to them.

In other news, classes are boring as always but at least internship promises to be interesting this week, if the email is anything to judge by. Tuesday is the Mid Autumn Moon Festival, so I'm really looking forward to that... Hanging out by moonlight... Enjoying drinks and sweets... Yeah, I can do that.

This Friday.... guess... You won't be able to -- its that cool: I'M CAMPING OUT AT THE GREAT WALL!!!! Hell yeah! Its suppose to rain, but I better not hear any bitching from mah companions. My mom says that its probably horrifically haunted, but I don't care. Its going to be so damn cool to say, "Oh yeah, I've been to the Great Wall... Twice... I've even camped there, in fact." *dance*

Oh, awkward though? Today Allie brought up after class how she thinks our Chinese teacher likes me--the middle school kind of like... Which is uncomfortable because I thought I was picking up on something but decided I was just over analyzing my own importance in the universe. Apparently not. *sigh* Unfortunately, this also means that he hardly ever calls on me and rarely publicly corrects me and I know my Chinese is not THAT damn good. Meanwhile, he absolutely picks on everyone else in the class so they get to practice their Chinese more... Merf. [[CLARIFICATION: Because I assume that everyone knows as much as I do... Which you may not--this is not not too exceptionally creepy because our professor is all of 24 years old. Yeah... when I went back to re-read I was like, "crap... that makes it sound like some old man is hounding me". Anyways. Carry on...]]

Just my luck, right?

Random: yesterday, when we were running (did I mention that I'm training for a marathon? Kinda... I'm running the 8 km race *shudder*) at the track, we found lots of Chinese sporty soccer players and *squees* Chinese guys practicing acrobatics! They were holding each other's ankles in pairs and doing doubles somersaults! You'd never get to see that kind of thing at a track in America.

(If you haven't guessed yet, I'm never going home...)

Oh yeah, and then the gecko...

Heh. China is just full of people and animals. Whee.

Allie managed to catch a gecko the other day... And if you know geckos, you know what happens when you catch'em....

Their tails pop off!

So of course she wants to show me, so she runs up to my room and manages to hide it from my roommates -- they would have freaked out -- and we played with the gecko in a little glass jar for a bit, watching its tail (on a different table) wiggle and squiggle.

We released it of course, by our window sill. They have so many little lizards here about; better than bugs, I'd say.

Today I'm going to the military museum! Yeah! Guns! and also maybe a little down town vendor shopping. We'll see.

Oh yeah -- I can read comments via email, but China won't let me post replies to them or see then through the web site *painintheasscommunists* So.. sorry if you're hoping for replies -.-

Where the hell am I?

Okay, so Allie and I head out of the West Gate, planning to grab a taxi and go to her friends apartment to play Risk (sweet Friday night, right?).

We get out of the Gate, and on the side walk, I see a snake.

And this is not any snake. This snake is 3 feet long, with black and brilliant red stripes along the whole of its body. And its dark out.. and people are almost STEPPING ON IT.

Allie and I ran over, making huge "DANGER" gestures and save a few chinese people. This guy, seeing us, comes over from his car and, through sign language, communicates that if the snake bites us, our arms will swell up. I assume that to mean that this colorful, big snake is poisonous.

So I say, in my wonderful chinese: "I'll go and tell the guards. They'll help us".

Unfortunately, my hissing and mimicking a snake's movement and using the measure word for long and skinny could not effectively convey the fact that there was imminent danger nearby.

So we return to the guy with the car and he goes to his trunk and pulls out two things: a tennis shoe and a tote bag.

Of course, I tell him that he is not allowed to smash the snake, half in motion and half in chinese.

Dui, dui, dui, dui... Using the shoe, he ushers the snake into the tote bag and ties the handles.

Then he hands the bag to Allie.

Of course I'm yelling, "No! We cannot accept a big, poisonous, colorful snake!" Its 10pm at night. What would we do with it?

We ask if we could let it go but he's firmly against that. In the end, he threw it into the back of his honda and drove off.

wtf.

I still cannot believe that really happened.

"Are you married?"

Today was a good day. I got up early and we went running. Its officially one month (to the day) until the race, so... It was a good start. Expect for the fact that China likes to leave manholes uncovered in the morning. Yeah, definitely pulled an elegant leap for the sake of my life. But other than that!

Was very productive in terms of work today. Yeah, its sad, I still have classwork to do. But Allie and I took a nice break to go to lunch. We find the cutest little place called ... something Pin Xiao something.. I'll look it up because if you are ever by Peking University's southern gate, its right there. It had the cleanliness I would expect of a western restaurant but the prices and delightful food that are definitely both Chinese.

After lunch, I kind of, uhn, passed out for a while but I really needed to so it was okay. Then I tackled some Rural Economics homework (so long as you stay on top of things, it doesn't seem like much work.

Around 6:00, Allie, Jin Wei and I headed over to WuDaoKou to set up for dinner. We were meeting a bunch of people who were getting off of their internships so we could do some western food (I HAD PANCAKES!) at Lush.

omg it was so good.

*drools*

Afterwards, I walked back with Rachel, Allie's roommate, and some guy who was going to ball room dancing asked her if she was married. I was conveniently dressed in scrubs so I deflected all attention (sweet). I think that Rachel just looks too nice. And she does, unwillingly, play into it. She can't help but have conversations with people. Poor thing.

And I learned today that I will be handling my little brother's college applications from Beijing. Yeah.

But now? Bed time!

Wow, so this is trippy

I just realized this...

In class, my professor has been saying "yisi shi(r)" but I've been hearing "is assured"

What's weird about that? yisi shir means "meaning".

So for example, he'd say (forgive the shoddy english, I'm dealing with Chinese here..) " 'Am not one of the best students?' yisi shir she is one of the best students"

And I was hearing: " 'Am not one of the best students?' Is assured she is one of the best students".

Com'on. That's trippy like 13th Warrior language learning trippy...

Anyone?

Gah Wednesdays

It was really hard to wake up this morning. I have Taiji classes at 7:00am but when that alarm went off... It was tempting to hit snooze. Luckily, I've started to use my cell phone as my alarm clock and I don't know how to hit snooze yet.

Rachel was supposed to go to Taiji today. She got up, took 20 minutes in the bathroom and then waltzes out with, "Uhn, yeah, I don't want to have to get up this early. I'm not going."

... Meanwhile, I have to scramble to get dressed, brush my teeth and put my contacts in because I AM going. Some people.

I have little patience or sympathy for the lazy.

After Taiji, I wolfed down my breakfast (some soupy yogurt and a piece of bread) and headed off to chinese class. We biked there today; its not far but Allie and I had an errand to run (no pun intended, see below) during our class break.

Anyways, 3 hours of Chinese class is a long time. Sigh. At least my laoshi is funny if also very demanding and very... well... Chinese.

During our 20 minute break, we biked over to the auditorium to register for the *gasp* Beijing 2007 marathon! Well, kind of. Allie's running the half marathon. I wanted to run to the 5 km (approx 3 miles...) but the spaces were all taken. So I'm signed up to run the 8 km *shudders* We'll see how it goes. The most physical thing I've done since my back surgery was climb the Great Wall. I know that sounds impressive, but I'm not sure I can run for more than 5 minutes straight right now.

Plus, its hard in Beijing because, ya know, they don't have oxygen only pollution.

I had a stupid moment during class though. In general, I don't like to leave in the middle of any class but today I was just slinging back my entire nalgene and sure enough had to pee so badly. Now, part of my bathroom aversion is out of respect, part of it is out of not wanting to draw too much attention to myself and part of it is because I prefer my dorm bathroom to the public bathrooms here. Don't get me wrong, this toilets really have some things going for them.

Think... toilet bowl, sunken into the ground. And subtract any sort of sitting device. Thus, you have a chinese squatter. Now, its quite easy if you have a skirt or what have you, but--if you've ever done a lot of camping, you'll agree--it takes some balance to and self knowledge to not piss all over the back of your pants, if you happen to be wearing pants. Luckily this is something that I've done before and can do and probably will do often here, but its just different enough that I'm very eh about it.

I think part of my "eh" has to do with the fact that we are not allowed to flush toilet paper, so even though you are entering a seemingly clean, indoor bathroom, you get the out-house scent. If I were going to an outhouse, that would be fine but everytime it surprises me.

So lesson learned, I just need to regulate my fluid intake for those 3 hour long classes.

Tonight we are going to quiz night at Lush. Its a westerner style bar but they've made their quiz night into a chinese culture/language/music everything. We've tried to stack our team (I suggested having auditions) but we'll see how the evening goes.

Tomorrow I have off and I don't think we have laboratory--it'll be a pure work day.

Oh and a story from last evening:

Allie and I ended up going to the Medicine House for food. We're sitting, enjoying our meal and these two college age guys come in, sit down near us and light up. Despite the fact that there is a no smoking sign on their table... and the window sill... and, actually, 10 other no smoking signs around the rest of the room. All in pictures, English and Chinese.

So, being the asshole from Boston that I am, at the end of our meal, I head over to their table.
Jen: "Excuse me, guys? Can either of you read fluent Chinese?"
Smoker 1: "No, its one of my ultimate goals though,"
Smoker 2: "Yes, unfortunately, our speaking and listening skills are a lot better than our reading skills."
Jen: *long pause, cannot believe they buying into this so well* "Oh well, I was just wondering, 'cause the sign's also in English" *nods towards no smoking sign and walks off before they can turn around again*

It was perfectly played.

Victory!

Thanks to the fact that Rachel, one of my roommates, is a internet smart ass, I can now have a blog from China.

Sweet. I know, right? Take that, government censorship!

I'm about to head off to dinner, but thought that I would give a basic run down of the past couple of weeks:

I'm living in China at Beida university (Peking University). I'm enrolled in (stupid) english classes but also have an independent study project that allows me to work as a lab assistant for one of the research labs on campus.

So far, our program has mostly done larger tourist spots: Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Great Wall...

In two weeks, I will be camping out on the Great Wall (yes, I think that's a bragging right).

Until then, I'll be... doing the usual.

Expect numerous stories -- funny and "...eh" alike -- as I document my attempt to assimilate.