Evan does China

So its been a little over a month since I last wrote anything. I apologize for that. I think I probably said last time I would try to do better about keeping up with this, but looks like that didn't come true. Sorry! To anyone who cares. I have been fairly busy, not using that as an excuse, cuz its not like I haven't had any free time to sit down and write, I really just haven't felt like it till now. I really have to be in the mood to do this, and it really hasn't felt right until now. So with that being said, I will try and to my best to share with you what I have been up to for the past month.

For starters, It has been a lot of school. That remains my biggest time commitment here, and will most likely stay that way till I leave. I have gotten used to it though, at least having 20 hours of class a week, and I do kind of like it, it keeps me busy. Does its job. Teaches me a lot of Chinese, which I then get to turn around and immediately use in my surroundings. An incredibly good method for studying Chinese. This is really the only way to do it. Chinese is too hard of a language to just be able to pick up from taking language classes in school. As of right now I am actually pretty satisfied with where my Chinese is at. I mean I still have those up and down days where one day I will be super stoked about my Chinese, then the next day I run into someone who says like three things to me, none of which I can understand and then I feel really stupid and terrible about it. Its a never ending battle. But I would say in general I am stoked. I also had some midterms, which happened to be on the 10th and 11th of this month, pretty lame considering my birthday was the 10th. I ended up doing alright, the tests were as you could imagine pretty challenging, but the teachers were surprisingly somewhat forgiving on our scores. I got like a 77% for listening, 79.5% for newspaper, 85% for speaking, and 93% for reading/writing class. I think my class attendance and participation is really gonna come and rescue my grades for some of those haha.

But yes enough of the boring school stuff, outside of school I have managed to make a few more friends. One kid, 邓洪春 (deng hongchun), I play ping pong with a few times a week and go eat dinner and stuff like that. He's a funny kid. Pretty different from a lot of the other Chinese students I have met. Number one he doesn't mind breaking the rules, and number two he's pretty witty. Seemingly much sharper than a lot of the other Chinese I have met. He catches on to my sarcasm pretty well and can dish it right back. Good stuff. I am gonna miss this kid. It's so different having a friend like him where you literally come from like two different worlds, and yet can be so similar in so many ways, or just share like similar hobbies or stuff along that line. And Chinese people are just so genuinely nice most of the time, it just blows me away. I have never run into so many honest, hard working, and genuine people in my life. Respect.

Hmm lets see what else has happened here in November. Well it was my 23rd birthday on the 10th. Because of midterms I waited until the 11th to celebrate. Went out to dinner at a southern Chinese cuisine restaurant with about 8 other people, then went out to this placed called Houhai, which is a lake with a bunch of bars around it. Walked from a subway station there for like 45 minutes. Drinking along the way. One thing I don't know if I have mentioned before or not but China doesn't have any open container laws or anything like that so you can walk around with as many open bottles of alchohol as you wish. So yeah, never have i appreciated that so much as birthday night hah. A bottle of beer in one hand and a bottle of souju in the other makes long walks a lot easier and a lot more fun. But yeah eventually made it to a club called like uhh well i forgot hah, but it was a pretty sweet dance club that always plays a lot of house music and stuff like that, which I like quite a bit, so all in all it was a great night, finally ended up back home at like 5 am. Besides my birthday celebration, we, being the UCEAP kids, just celebrated Thanksgiving. It was a little late, Saturday the 26th instead of the 24th. This is because our wonderful program director decided to host all of us at his house for a Thanksgiving feast, which it was. We pretty much had everything that you would normally eat on Thanksgiving, including pies! It seems you really can find just about anything in Beijing. But what was really great about the whole thing was just getting a lot of us back together in one place. I have the best times here in Beijing when we are all together again, just hanging out. It's a really bizarre feeling. I think its just that I feel so connected to these people since number one, we are all from pretty much the same place, and probably also because we all did the summer program together. We have truly bonded i feel. Even if we are all completely different people, it always seems like whenever we all get together everyone has an awesome time. So it was nice having a Thanksgiving like that, even if I couldn't be with my family, at least I was with a lot of close friends, and I also couldn't have asked for a better host. Speaking of this program director, John Thomson, is amazing. He tooks us all on a little field trip in late October, just around a few temples in Beijing. But this guy is just a wealth of knowledge on all things China. He is like a living history book of China. Some of the stories he has told us about him living in China like 40 years ago, and about being one of the first foreigners being allowed back into Beijing in the 80s, are just amazing. Let alone all the factual history he also knows about China. He is also incredibly sharp still. One of my favorite things I have heard him say, which was said at a meeting a few days before we were gonna go tour these temples was something along the lines of "diplomatic privileges are worthless unless they are abused." Which I suppose taken out of context could sound bad but he was just referencing getting some sort of discount on tickets to these places and places to eat. But really funny nonetheless, and probably really true.

Anyways, thats pretty much all I got for now, at least all I feel like writing, I'm getting tired. Its Sunday night, I still got some studying and reviewing to do for next week. I am less than a month out now from coming home, I couldn't be happier about that. It's not that I hate it here, I really don't, I just miss home and everyone there. I also feel like I am accomplishing a lot of my goals I set for myself before I came here so it's a really really good feeling. So I know by the time December the 23rd roles around I will feel accomplished and proud and incredibly stoked to be back home and put this crazy life adventure under my belt. I will probably write one more of these before I head back home, probably the night before I leave, unless I either get the urge to write a new entry, which is unlikely, or something really ridiculously amazing/bizarre happens that I feel like sharing with everyone who reads these. Other than that you can expect another one in about 3 weeks or so!

So once again life has become really quite busy. It was nice having that break from school in the beginning of October, allow myself to recollect a bit and rest hah. It pretty much turned into an even longer break than just that week because my friend Beau, came in to Beijing the Monday we started school. Needless to say it was awesome having Beau around. He picked a great hotel, it was incredibly close to my campus, so it was very easy to go meet him there. Pretty much everyday I took him around Beijing, going to a lot of the touristy sites and what not. Still fun, even if its the 3rd,4th,5th time.... haha. I would have to say our highlight was going to the Great Wall though. Yes it is my 4th time going there, but everytime I have gone its been to a different location. And well people say 3rd times the charm, but Im gonna disagree when it comes to going to the Great Wall. 4th times the charm. First of all, it was a beautiful day, so that probably helped the most, actually being able to see out off the wall and look at it snaking its way over the mountains, and secondly I really do think that it was the best part of the wall I had seen. Parts of it had been preserved well, and other parts had not, so we kinda got the best of both worlds. I will post some new pictures of it. We also had a great time hanging out with my roommate Steve and Chinese friend Dong Chunkai (董春凯). It was quite amazing how we were all able to still communicate. Whenever Dong Chunkai would want to say something to Beau, if I didn't understand it, it would have to go through Steve in Chinese, then from Steve to me in a mix of Chinese and English, then I would be able to get it to Beau. Of course this is all while we are having a few beers at the same time so that might have had a little to do with it, but yes, it was still a great time.

Pretty much after Beau left everything went back to normal, for better or worse hah. School is once again consuming most of time during the weekdays. 4 hours of class everyday is quite a lot, plus studying/meeting with language partners. This is the longest I have ever gone doing that. And i still got 2 more months left of it. I just hope this means that when I get back to UCSC class will seem like a joke. This weekend I did accomplish two new things that I have wanted to do here. One was go to a Peking Opera （京剧）, and the second was seeing a Chinese movie in the theaters. I got lucky enough to go see the Opera for free, my teacher invited me hah, although I couldn't really understand anything that they were saying, it was still quite interesting. I did not fall asleep like I was slightly afraid of. And it turns out that my teacher also could not really understand a whole lot that was going on. Apparently during the dialogues they use slightly bizarre words that most Chinese people are not used to, so yes, I did not feel as bad for not understanding after he explained that to me. As for seeing the Chinese movie in the theaters... Well lets just say I will probably not be doing that again. That could just be more of my fault for not doing research into the movie I picked, but I mean lets just say there is a reason as to why about 95% of Chinese movies never make it out to the rest of the world. It even had Jet Li (李连杰) in it, who I like a lot, but that could still not save the movie from its ridiculous/cheesy/predictable self. As far as everything else goes there is really not much going on here. Swam today again for the first time in awhile. I did about 2500 meters so not bad, Im getting back up there. Still slow though. Unfortunately I still have a decent amount of homework left to do today. Newspaper class is still the worst thing. I cannot wait till I am done with that class. No more finding and translating articles... Anyways be sure to check out the pictures I put up after this. Hopefully next time I'll have some more interesting things to talk about hah.

So I am at the beginning of my weeklong break here. It is now national week here in China. I’m really not too sure what the holiday is about, but just about everyone has the week off, not just students so it’s a pretty big deal here. It really couldn’t have come at a more perfect time for me. For the first time in my life I have truly felt homesick. I really am not sure why it all of a sudden came about. Literally all of a sudden. But yeah I have never felt this feeling before. I now understand it and know what it truly means. A lot of things you can only experience first hand to know what it is actually like, homesickness is one of them. Just like in the case of me getting really really sick back in July. I now understand how people can die from diarrhea. I have so much more respect for people who leave home for long periods of time; especially those that don’t even have an option. Like I chose to come here and for this amount of time. But anyways, the homesickness came about last Wednesday right after I finished eating dinner. All of a sudden I had like an overwhelming sinking feeling in my chest. Like nothing that I could do at that time would make me happy, the only thing I wanted was to be at home. I really didn’t know what to do. I just tried to take deep breaths, tell myself there is really nothing wrong at all, some self-motivation stuff. Eventually I kinda shook it off for the night, started to listen to some music and that helped a lot, worked on a presentation for class and then got really tired and went to sleep. But the feeling never really left. It hasn’t come back that strong again, it is still kind of lingering around, but everyday that passes now it gets more and more faint. I talked to my roommate Steve about it. He has actually lived in China for 3 years straight and has not once gone home to Japan. He told me it happens to him occasionally. So what he told me to do was just try and do like American things hah. Meaning, watch American/English movies, listen to music, and read English things, do all that stuff for a little while and the feeling will eventually go away. He said you just all of a sudden have a breakthrough and the feeling fully goes away. After maybe a week or so. So here I am writing in English and listening to Bob Marley haha. Yesterday I watched both Ghostbusters movies. It does help a lot.

I also went on a bike ride. Last night I went out and biked around my campus for a bit until I was feeling good, then got a little feeling of adventure and left campus and went exploring around the city. It’s really like nothing I have ever experienced before, or really have the opportunity to do at home. As crazy as the streets here in Beijing are, I like biking on them. It feels like an adventure every time. There are so many things going on that I have to be aware of, it totally clears my mind and lets me just relax, as much as one can biking on the streets of Beijing hah. It brings me to the present. And there are so many places to go and see that I have never been, or would ever go normally. It’s crazy when I think about it. What are the chances that I would ever end up in that exact place, but I did. Like the alley I biked into last night, when would I have ever ended up there in my lifetime if I had not hopped on my bike and just randomly decided to turn down it because it looked interesting. It helps put things into perspective to me about how special of an opportunity it really is for me to be here. Sometimes that gets lost to me. Especially recently.

I know I have stated that my classes were tough before but I haven’t ever really experienced something like exhausting my brain like my classes are now, probably part of the reason why I got homesick all of a sudden. As it turns out I am actually taking 27quarter units worth of credits. I originally thought that it was only 18; which are still a lot for one quarter for me, usually I take about 15. So yes I am taking 27 units worth of credits in about the same amount of time as a quarter hah. About one month longer than a normal quarter. So yeah…. This is the reason for my mental exhaustion. This break is really quite a blessing for me. I’m not exactly sure how I am gonna power through the next 3 months of class hah. Haven’t quite figured that out yet. Probably going to try a little less in my classes. Hopefully I can find a balance in my days where I am still learning a lot but still having time to do different things in my days, like going to do something that doesn’t involve a lot of Chinese thinking. I really feel like I need to have some sort of activity to break up the Chinese thought and being in China and everything like that. I am really itching to get back into the pool. Like swimming used to do for me at home, take me away from anything that was bothering me at the time, or just like giving my brain a true rest. Unfortunately, the pool was closed on this past Saturday, so I still have not been able to take the swim test to let me swim in the deep side of the pool. I will probably just end up going to the pool on Monday to see if I can either take the test then, or maybe they will just let me swim on the deep side after watching me for a bit. I have been told it’s pretty much impossible to swim in the shallow end with all the people so yeah that could be outta the question.

But yeah this brings me to another point; I really do love the Chinese people. Well the majority of them. They are so incredibly nice. Like yes some stuff they do is weird to me and probably most westerners. They have some bad personal hygiene habits and weird customs, but those are really just cultural things. When it comes down to it, they are really nice. Saturday I was waiting for the pool to open so I could take the swim test, which of course I didn’t because the pool didn’t open. But I didn’t know that because I misread the sign that they had posted. The sign had the dates and times for the weekend, and then had two characters after it that I didn’t know what they meant. The way the sign appeared to me was that everything was normal; the only reason for the sign was because it is a holiday. But as it turns out the last two characters actually meant cancelled haha. I only found this out because an old Chinese man came down to the pool to swim as well, and read then sign, and then proceeded to let me know that it was actually closed, and those characters meant cancelled. I think walked back with him out of the gym, its kind of a maze to get to the pool, and we just talked a little bit. I told me he started swimming because he had some health related accident, I was exactly sure what he said, something like a heart attack where they had to cut his chest open and do something haha. So yeah he told me he used to do kung fu but cant now so he started swimming for exercise about 5 years ago. He is now 75 years young, his words haha, but yeah he was just really nice and gave me compliments on my Chinese speaking ability, at least how it sounds, and had just a very nice overall aura about him. So yeah it was just a very pleasant moment for me. Sometimes everything else that is going on in my life causes me overlooks those.

It is now Sunday evening and I feel the most relaxed I have felt in a long time, the most at peace I have felt in a long time here. It helps having incredibly nice weather as well. Today was gorgeous. The best weather I have ever experienced here in Beijing. It was a little chilly, maybe upper 50s, but just beautiful blue sky and what seemed to me to be fresh air (probably not possible here, but as close as I will get). Something I have taken for granted for a long time but now I know how to truly enjoy. So hopefully I can continue to feel this way and let the homesickness fully leave me for good here.

First of all I would like to apologize for it taking me so long to post another entry. I know I said I would try and post more frequently, like once a week, but things have been really quite busy for me. This is not an excuse for me being slightly lazy, but school is really really hard haha. I have 20 hours of Chinese class a week, 4 hours a day, and then anywhere from 2-4 hours of homework/studying a night on top of all that. Forgive me if I don’t really feel like writing after that. My weekdays are rather busy. Outside of all the schoolwork I have also found a new language partner, technically I have two, but I meet with them at the same time, they are a couple haha. The first week of class my reading/writing teacher hooked me up with this girl as a language partner. I think her boyfriend got a little nervous about that and so the second time we met he came along with her without letting me know. Not that I cared at all. I thought it was funny, but as it turns out we all get along quite well. I think he relaxed a little bit about me after meeting, and he decided that he also wanted to partake in the language exchange, so now we all meet together. But I like them both; they are both really nice people, and funny. So yeah that is where some of my free time goes, as well as I have a tutor who I meet with two hours every week. Other than that I am still doing the Insanity workout program, I like it more and more everyday hah. I am really quite sold on the workout DVD programs at this point. It’s a great option for people who don’t want to go to the gym or just want to workout inside their house/room. It saves a lot of time and effort for me. I still have yet to start swimming. I need to pass my schools swimming test to swim in the deep end, the shallow end is too crowded to even begin to attempt anything of a workout. So yeah they only offer that on Saturday afternoons at 2, so yeah gotta get around to that, hopefully next weekend. But yeah other than that I haven’t done a whole lot of exciting things. School is tough hah.
My school schedule includes 4 hours of newspaper reading class, 4 hours of speaking class, 4 hours of listening class, 6 hours of reading/writing class, and 2 hours of a separate tutoring class a week. Newspaper reading class is by far the hardest. It’s really really hard. I thought it was a joke at first how hard it was. The first day we dove right into reading a newspaper article, but first our teacher had us prepare the vocab, which was reading over 30 new and difficult vocab words once, then trying to read the article and answer her questions about it. Problem number one with this situation was that neither I, nor anyone else for that matter, was able to memorize the vocab after seeing it once and saying out loud. If it were that easy I wouldn’t be here. Second problem is that the article had even more vocab words that nobody new that also wasn’t on the list. So of course we could not answer her questions, let alone read the article… It was a mental struggle to say the least. Which left my brain hurting quite a lot when we were done. It happens everyday after about hour 3 of class actually. My brain can’t process Chinese as well anymore, or as quickly, it just kind of slowly starts to shut down hah. But yeah the other classes aren’t nearly as hard, just a lot of work. Although listening class is also quite difficult, but we don’t have really any homework for that class, just listening to some sound files and preparing a short list of vocab, so it kinda cancels out the difficulty.
But yes that is what my weeks consist of, and watching Chinese movies/cartoons. I’m really developing a love for Chinese martial arts movies, I mean I had an interest before, and I would watch them, but now I get to watch them in Chinese, which is far more rewarding even if I don’t get all the details. But the more I learn in and out of class, and the more I watch them the easier it gets to understand. Sometimes I even surprise myself at how much of the movies I actually understand. And I am even able to guess at meanings of new characters that I have never seen before and be correct. It’s quite a good feeling. So yeah I should be coming back with quite a lot of Chinese movies to help me practice at home. Anyways I really haven’t been able to get out into the city so much anymore. Pretty much only on weekends. Summer school was so nice and easy. Hah I thought it was kinda easy before while I was taking it, but now I really know. It really was like a summer school class hah, but in China. Only giving us like an hour or two of homework a night, letting us have plenty of free time throughout the day to go out and play. It was a great program though, just definitely not really enough to learn Chinese. I remember before I left Santa Cruz I was talking to one of my Chinese professors and he told me that just doing the summer program I would learn how to order food, take a taxi, and barter for stuff, and that’s about it. He said the majority of it will be spent with your fellow UCEAP students which you will be speaking English with the whole time. He was totally right. Don’t get me wrong though, taking a summer program in China is definitely much better than taking one at home, you definitely learn how to listen and speak much better than back in the states, but it isn’t nearly enough. It just gets you to that point where you’re about ready to take off speaking Chinese, but not quite there. He told me I definitely would need to stay for at least 6 months before I would be decent at Chinese.
And well here I am 3 months down, 3 months to go. I don’t really know where I am at in terms of my Chinese abilities at this point. I mean after starting this semester my reading and writing has taken off quite quickly but my speaking and listening has not quite kept up to speed. Pretty much the exact opposite of what happened during the summer hah. So who knows really. I’m just trying not to think about it as much anymore and just kinda go with it. But yeah already over halfway through my stay here. It’s really hard to believe to be honest. I mean at first everything was going by sooo slowly. I thought I’d never get outta here. But now I can’t believe it’s already been 3 months, and I have less time left than I have already gone through. Every year times seems to go by faster and faster, and every year I always get so amazed by how fast time passes. There is an old Chinese saying that I feel is pretty fitting, 光阴似箭，guang1yin1si4jian4, meaning time flies like an arrow. Awesome.
Last thing I would like to say is I want to wish my Grandpa George a happy 87th birthday coming up here at the end of September. I wish I could be there to celebrate with you but I am still over here in China. But I will see you at Christmas time! I only hope that I can live as long and as meaningful of a life as you have. Happy Birthday!

Oh P.S. also posted/ am going to post some new pictures. So check them out if you life!

So today is Tuesday the 6th of September. My short-lived summer vacation, or the relaxing part of summer vacation is quickly coming to an end. I remember thinking to myself that the month of August would go by rather quickly, but I really did not imagine it would have gone by this quickly. Not to mention it is already the 6th of September and I start school in 2 days. But yes 2 weeks of traveling took up a lot of it, and this past week and a half has flown by as well. It has been a really relaxing week and a half for me though. It’s been nice to be able to stay put in Beijing and get myself back feeling steady again. I finally feel like I have a handle on my stomach here. It has been a careful few weeks of eating for myself, but I am slowly starting to branch out away from my “safe foods” and back to eating more real Chinese food. I also started working out again, which has made a world of difference for me. I have more energy throughout the day and I feel better about myself haha. I bought a yoga mat and I am now about 11 days into the insanity work out program haha. Thanks Shaun T! Still haven’t gotten back in the pool yet, but that will happen as soon as I figure out my class schedule. I am also going to sign up for a kungfu class hah. After watching so many Chinese martial arts movies they have really rubbed off on me. So yeah we will see how that goes as well. I’m excited to try something new. I am starting class real soon, so really I only have like 1.5 more days of freedom. But to be honest I have been excited for class to start ever since it ended about a month ago. So yeah, its not the worst thing in the world by any means. My thirst for learning Chinese has not gone anywhere. I have kinda stepped back on the studying since class ended, but since I’m living here its pretty impossible not to be learning and practicing everyday as it is. So I am okay with not studying for now, the world is my classroom hah. Plus I am going to be in 4 different Chinese classes. A listening and speaking one, a reading and writing one, a Chinese newspaper reading class, and one other one I forgot. So yeah Im pretty stoked about that. I get to just study Chinese for the next 4 months. Couldn’t be happier with the schooling situation.

On another note my roommate is totally awesome. We get along great and its nice being able to practice my Chinese with him all the time. I pretty much only talk to him in Chinese, which can get rather difficult, but I get by, and its great practice. He will talk to me in a combo of English and Chinese, I think the farther on in the semester we get the more we will just be able to just speak Chinese. But yeah my roommate, Steve, his English name, loves sports, mostly baseball and football, American football that is. So yeah we got enough to talk about there. He also knows just a ton about America as it is and is always asking me questions about it ha. But yeah he is a great guy, took him out to dinner last night to eat his first real American burger. Its funny, you can pretty much find anything you want here in Beijing if you know where to look. So yeah we went to this place that has a buy one burger get one free deal on Mondays, and these are legit burgers, like $15 burgers, but half off on Mondays! But yeah he was pretty stoked about it. Surpassed his expectations by far. I also have been teaching him a little bit of American slang. Which is also pretty fun hah. He is a smart guy and catches on to stuff real quick.

One more thing I forgot to mention earlier that I am really excited about is that yesterday Jim took me to a shop to get a tailored suit. It was awesome hah. And only about $120. So yeah I’m going back with him on Thursday to pick up our suits, and Ill be comin back to the states with a very nice business suit, perhaps even two, depending on how good this one looks haha. But yeah that’s probably the coolest thing I have bought so far here. But yeah other than that I feel like I’ve just been relaxing a lot finally, hanging out at my campus, and visiting friends at another campus, taking it easy. Basically it’s just been nice to finally feel like I have my feet on steady ground here. Living here in this crazy place actually feels pretty normal to me now which is a very good feeling cuz I’m about to start the real long haul of my stay in China…