Great Wall for Beginners

In Beijing, no more jetlag! Or as they say here, "yinwei shi cha de guanxi, wo shui bu jiao!" Actually, that means the exact opposite, but none of y'all know that unless I say so (except for you, Bethy)! Ha! The power is mine! I'm two weeks into the most intensive program of my entire life. Rise and shine at 7am to start 5 hours of class, 5 hours of homework, and if you so choose, you can meet with a tutor (I of course need to as I am about a half a year behind everyone else in the program, who have all taken a year of Chinese). We are not allowed to speak any English at any time, and anything pertaining to the English language is discouraged, meaning that my current blogging is tantamount to manslaughter in the Princeton in Beij. paradigm! So of course, that provides all the impetus I need to blog again. . .

The photo below is of our first class outing. There are about 170 of us total, ranging from 2nd year to 5th year levels. We went to a pretty quiet area of the Great Wall, much better than where my dad and I went last year:

So it's one year later and here I am again, but in different clothes. I am wearing a t-shirt that Princeton gave us when we arrived: it says "Beishida" in Chinese, which is the name of our host school, Beijing Normal University. Apart from being cool sheerly from the fact that it is written in Chinese, it is also conveniently dorky enough for the Great Wall (again, please refer to my pictures from last year). Some of the Chinese teachers who came with us were wearing tight dresses and high heels! The Chinese are certainly a fashionable lot.

Here is a view of the Great Wall, unencumbered by students. It is actually really nice to be among so many students--it is summer camp all over again! Except that I am really old in comparison to most of the others, who are generally sophomores or juniors in college. The other grad students and I have formed a sort of "oldie" enclave--fortunately they put us all in the same hall so we could distinguish ourselves to each other immediately. This was very important as we had only one night in China when we were allowed to converse in English before we began the program, which forced us to identify our friends and foes quickly. Speaking of which--it is kind of amazing to think that I have never spoken to most of the people on the program in English. We were talking about how it would be really weird to do that after the program. If anything, this program has reinforced my psycholanalytically grounded convictions that language conditions absolutely everything. I think I could go on and on about this, but I think I might just disperse little anecdotes throughout my blog entries this summer (yes people, I think I might become a regular again as this little screen is my only English refuge!)

Below is a photo of me and my roommate, Zhen-ting. We sleep in beds that are approximately a foot apart. Fortunately, both of us have a real sense of humor about sharing a room at the age of 28. It makes things a little easier, albeit slightly guilt inducing, to know that all of our teachers live in rooms that are much worse, about the same size, and with 4 other women. For some reason, I am really seeing clearly my American side on this trip--more so even than when I am in India! Apart from being slightly dissatisfied by a room that most of the population here would be thrilled to have, I am afraid of toothpaste
and lightning. It also rains all the time here. Well, my beauty sleep awaits. I can't tell you how much I cherish a free moment these days.