July 4th & Summer Palace

The internet here is incredibly shoddy. We (as foreign students) pay 140 yuan (about 16-17 US$), but it is pretty terrible. The service drops a lot every few minutes, so it can be really frustrating when you're trying to use zhongwen.com, check facebook, espn.com, etc. But besides that, this has been a great week.

This week, we had incredibly hard lessons. Both Ch. 7 and 8 in the 4th year curriculum cover history topics, so the vocabulary and sentence structures are incredibly formal and more difficult to use. Even the teachers and local grad students sympathized with us on this one, but as usual, we got through the week unscathed.

Thursday was July 4th, and the air was amidst with American pride. A lot of students wore red, white and blue and at there were excursions to McDonalds and Pizza Hut for meals that day. For dinner, I went to "The Sauce," which is a Western-style restaurant in the university's cafeteria. I had iceberg lettuce for the first time since Yale ended - it was a good break from the monotony of oily Chinese vegetables they usually have in the dining hall. We also had pizza there, and also we had to wait a ridiculous 50 minutes, it was surprisingly good. I'd recommend going to The Sauce as a good getaway from the typical rice dish. At night, a few of us headed out to Propaganda, which is a local club near BeiYu's campus. It was great celebrating July 4th there, because the club is notorious for attracting foreign students, and that night it was mostly American.

Saturday's scheduled excursion with HBA was to the Ming Tombs, but I had already been and I also remembered that it was not very exciting. Not many students decided to go, and instead, I went to Yi He Yuan (Summer Palace) with a few friends instead. It was dreadfully hot, but the Summer Palace was very relaxing and a great escape from the business and constant action that the rest of Beijing provides. It was an easy bus ride (only 1 yuan or $.12) to get there, and the entrance fee was also very cheap. The place was very large, and we spent about 6 hours there, including an hour boat ride where we just went around the large lake and resting our feet after a long day. When we were coming back, we got caught in one of Beijing's notorious thunderstorms. We ran through the street in pouring rain to find shelter after getting off the bus, and just 30 minutes later, the rain had stopped. (Ridiculous) In any case, it was an eventful day, but now I am pretty tired and debating what to do tonight. A few PIB students are visiting BeiYu, so we might head out on an excursion somewhere. For now, here are some pics from Yi He Yuan.

The other kids...Jesse, Ming, Amy, Rachel

Marble Boat