Oh China!

大家好！

I know I haven't written in a few days, but I just got my internet set up - finally. HBA has been extremely tiring yet surprisingly enjoyable. Though it's only the third day, I feel like I've been here for at least a few weeks. I guess that's because we've covered three weeks of material already! So a quick rundown of the past few days...

Saturday - I arrived in Beijing at 3 PM but waited for my luggage until 4:30. Turns out I ended up missing the HBA shuttle at 4 PM (they'd waited for me for an hour...) and so I took a taxi to Bei Yu, which is the university where HBA is hosted. The ride was about 45 min and was only 94 kuai (equivalent to approx $13, much better than NY taxis, etc.). On the way, we passed by the Olympic stadium that's being built. It was pretty exciting, and the taxi driver was more than eager to talk about fun stuff to do in Beijing (although I missed about 75% of what he was saying.) I arrived at HBA and found my way to the conference center. Luckily, Ming yee, Lulu, and a few other Yale students happened to be coming out of the elevator. I quickly stashed my luggage in my room before coming back down to the lobby and sharing our first night out in the city. We went to a touristy place called "Hou hai," which is actually a large lake with lots of shops, restaurants, bars all along the banks. We had some delicious Beijing food then decided to go paddle-boating on the water. There was one, as we later learned, infamous bridge where all the boats get stuck under. The passage under the bridge was only large enough for one boat to pass through at a time, but being impatient people, everyone was trying to edge their way through the tunnel = DID NOT WORK and took forever. That was quite an adventure, though somewhat frustrating in the end haha.

Sunday was orientation day. We got introduced to all the teachers and signed the language pledge - no more English! An interesting note on this policy later on...

Monday was the first day of class. 8-12AM, then another 50 min one-on-one session in the afternoon = intense stuff. I was quite overwhelmed Sunday night with the workload as I didn't start until quite late at night... Luckily, everything is manageable as long as you put in the hard work.

So, today is Wednesday and I have yet to start preparing for tomorrow's lesson. Grrrreat. We also have an essay due Friday, not to mention a debate and a weekly quiz on the past 3 lessons. Once again, even better. Even with all this work, however, HBA has already been an awesome experience. From the ridiculously cheap Chinese food to meeting those disgusting (joking) yet actually cool Harvard kids to not speaking English to your friends! We've decided that sometimes, speaking Chinese is like charades. We can't say the word in English, so we make up English words. For example:

Facebook: face = lian, book = shu, so we get lianshu
Youtube: you = ni, tube = quan, so we get niquan
Preppy: pu + er + pi (phonetic)

and the best of all...

Hole-in-the-wall (when referring to a restaurant): qian li mian yi ge dong (literal translation)

Anyhow, Great Wall is this Saturday, and I can't wait! I just have to get through this week first; speaking of which, I should probably get on this next lesson. For now, ciao!