Break

I'M ALIVE. I survived my first semester in China. I came out with a few bumps (a B in history) and bruises (a C in math), but I nevertheless gained a lot of experience and insight into life, I hope. Here are some things I've learned over the past three months and three weeks:

• Money isn't the most important thing; happiness is
• making friends from different countries gives you perspective on different cultures
• it's better to stay indoors starting mid-November or you'll get frostbite
• endure the hot, crowded bus during the summer because you'll appreciate the warmth by December
• wifi isn't that important either, apparently
• Home Plate is the best Texas BBQ restaurant in the world

And that's all I can think of at the moment. Home Plate is really amazing. Upon interning at Nice HQ, I've been eating a lot of Western food because the company reimburses our lunch and dinner breaks. This probably isn't good for my health, since all I eat is french fries and greasy hamburgers, and the gym has been closed for renovation for about a month now and will be closed for two more weeks. I've decided that I'm going to let myself go until the gym opens so that working out will be more of a challenge for me.

First semester is over, which means all the semester kids are home, or in Isabel's case, are going home. This also means our class schedules are going to be completely arranged, which is nice for me because I'm moving down in math, AGAIN, and I won't be the only one with an out of wack schedule. Having nine people go home is a weird thought. This journey, adventure, trip of a lifetime, whatever you want to call it, is over for them. They may never see the gates of Erfuzhong, buy fried rice from down the alley, study at Cafe Bené, or ride a taxi across the city for ten US dollars ever again. Saying goodbyes at the SYA Christmas party was very sad, but I'm sure we'll all see each other again at some reunion in the future. Oh and I played the Chinese banjo at the Christmas party for the music recitals. It was scary and my hands were shaking and sweaty and I hope I never have to do it again but it was kinda fun.

A few days ago, while I was eating breakfast, my mom came up to me and said she was going to send me a picture on WeChat of some medication that she wanted my dad to get from the states. The picture was captioned in Chinese, and I think that because of that, she expect me to be able to understand what the medication was, despite the fact that the box in the picture was labeled "PRENATAL MEDICATION". So, yeah, my host mom is pregnant. You may ask, what about the one-child policy? Is she going to be fined? Is her husband going to be kicked out of his commune? You also may not ask these things, but I will answer these questions because there is a lot of American ignorance centered around the infamous policy. My mom does already have a 13 year old son, but his father is not the father of the fetus currently baking in my mom's uterus; her boyfriend is. Because her boyfriend doesn't have children, she won't be fined or be forced to get an abortion, and he won't have to lose his job. Oh, and also, you can have two kids in China as long as you and your spouse are both only children! Yaaaay!

By the way, I FINALLY got around to posting pictures on my photo blog. These pictures consist of those from the sports event, my trip to the countryside, Shanxi, and some random adventures around Beijing. If you happen to read this post on the day that I post it, you'll only get to see half of the pictures I've been meaning to post, because Tumblr won't let me post more than 100 pictures a day, so I recommend you check them out tomorrow, unless you're so impatient that you have to see them today.

There's four more days till Christmas, but I wouldn't be able to tell if it weren't for calendars. The Christmas spirit here is pretty bleak, but at least my dad will be here in less than a week!!

It's freezing

It's been more than a month since I've last posted and I've never felt guiltier about it. My lateness is due to a combination of busyness and laziness and trying to get over the cold. As a child of California, I believe that the cold part is a solid excuse. The weather has officially transitioned from sweating weather to sweater weather to three layers of sweaters and pants weather. It is currently 28 degrees with windchill and the only other time I ever felt weather colder than this was the one time I visited Cory's parents and extended family in Indiana five years ago, and the weather was 5 degrees for one day, so I guess you could say that the weather here is preparing me for what's to come next year. Despite this adjustment and the fact that bus on which I am writing this post has a woman standing in front if me whose hair is statically attracted to my face, I'm starting to see myself live in this city in the future more and more over time. I guess I really do belong in major East Asian cities after all. 

Speaking of living here, I might have a potential career opportunity! Well, probably not, but the thought is promising. An SYA alum came to talk during our weekly Wednesday assembly. He started by talking to us about his experience as a 00' graduate of SYA China. The six floored Erfuzhong building wasn't there, and he had to be in classes 1/2 the size of most of our classes. He said that at the time there was only one Starbucks, which was 40 minutes away from school. This would have been a nightmare to me, as I find myself at the Starbucks in Sunlituan every Sunday in order to study and do weekend homework. Very un-Chinese, I know, but I get a lot of work done that way. Besides, I get to see fun things like a man discreetly spitting on the floor and wiping it with his foot. Anyway, after SYA, he came back to Beijing on vacation and, for whatever reason, found himself staying here. He now works as the head of the international part of the headquarters (I think) of a photo sharing app called quite similar to Instagram called Nice, and he came to SYA to recruit young, hip interns who spoke at least a little bit of Chinese and. I emailed him my application, which he requested to be in the form of an app in the App Store. Here was my application:

I know, I'm unbearably, side-splittingy hilarious. I assume that he received my try at comedy and liked it, because he emailed me and two of my peers this afternoon letting us know that the headquarters of Nice are "very excited to have [us] come and join the team," and for us to come in on Saturday at 11am, free taxi ride and food included. I'm doing things for teenage diplomacy, America! In case the term "teenage diplomacy" doesn't ring a bell, it's referred to in the CNN interview with SYA that took place about a month ago. You can watch the video here and watch me eat noodles at 0:41.

My mom told me that I have significantly improved at speaking Chinese. Before, she had to repeat herself multiple times and I had to fight to get a sentence out. Now we can easily have conversations. Today, we had day one of the notorious yanjiangs, which are these speeches that SYA students have to do every year, twice a year, about the topic of their choice. I found myself able to get through the 3 minute speech pretty easily and confidently aside from a bit of stage fright. To add onto small victories, I am able to appreciate crowded buses because they are much warmer than standing outside.

A few of my less narcissistic moments come from my experiences with going out in public with Lizzie. This girl draws in the Chinese like honey and bees. One time, we were on the bus to school when the bus came to a lurching stop, and the man in front of Lizzie grabbed ahold of her in a hug-like fashion for about 10 seconds longer than necessary. A few minutes later, I caught him taking a picture of her. I gave him this "Really?" sort of look and he smiled sheepishly. Last weekend, Lizzie met up with me at Starbucks and a photographer parked himself in front of us, continuously taking pictures of her. She literally had to put her hand in front of her face in order for him to stop. I feel like I'm friends with a celebrity. China, man.

Christmas is three weeks away. You may think that I'd be pretty sad about it, since I live in a country that doesn't exactly celebrate the holiday, but you are WRONG. There are parts of Beijing that really emphasize the Christmas spirit, and I think I feel the spirit more here than I ever have in California, probably because of the cold. Sunlituan is one of these parts. They actually have a Christmas tree! Well, a Christmas trees composed of Swarovski crystals, but I'm pretty sure that that's just as festive.

Besides, Father comes on the 27th of December for a week, so all will be well!

I've still been going to the Deshengmen community center to tutor the elderly. I went to dinner at a restaurant with a hasty woman who rushed me through my meal and took me to her house for just 15 minutes in order to get me home early enough to do homework. Her house was proabably one of the fanciest I've ever seen in Beijing. Well I've only actually been in about 5 different houses in Beijing but this one was pretty dang fancy. Here's a picture of the woman, in her somewhat humble abode, who insisted that the chandelier made the photo:

We sang and played a few songs on the piano together and she served me coffee after insistently asking "coffee or tea?" in adorably broken English. On our way to the bus stop, as she clutched my arm borderline painfully so I wouldn't end up in the street, we talked about Chinese history to study for my history test the next day. Experiences like those are some that I sometimes keep forgetting that I will never have in the US.

DOG UPDATE: I keep getting the question "How's Alex?" Unfortunately, we had to give Alex away. We all agreed that the poor dog peed everywhere and cried far too much for any of us to keep our sanity. 

If anyone from home has any more questions, feel free to contact me and I will compile answers for these questions in my next, hopefully soon post!