Lots of things have made me feel unintelligent living in Beijing. Embarrassing miscommunications, paying the wrong amount, and so on. I think today tops everything.
As I've written about before, I have host family here. They have been incredibly generous in making sure we get to see as much of Beijing as possible. So today I decided to give them a little present. Because I didn't realize how useful it might have been to bring gifts from New York, I decided the most meaningful gift I could give was a cd of a few of my recordings of me playing piano. I had the cd in my bag, all ready, very excited. At one point, our host father dropped us off at the subway station to go park his car. When he realized he couldn't find a spot, he pulled back up in front of us and told us to get back in. As I quickly sat back down, I heard a loud "crrrckkk." Two half cd's is probably one of the most useless gifts in the world. After an explanation and an apology, I told him I would make the cd again for next time. Oops.
Anyway, other than me being a klutz, the day was very interesting. Though I am still not exactly sure what my host father's job is (the Chinese is too technical), it is something related to subway development. He told us he was going to take us to his office building. We weren't exactly sure why. Once we entered, everything suddenly became top secret. His son wasn't allowed to enter (too young). Swine flu screening. Metal detector. No pictures (so no pictures...). Then we suddenly found ourselves in Beijing's Subway System Control Center. You know in space movies, where something goes wrong, and they have to communicate with the control center? The room looked something like that. Hundreds of massive tv screens. Tons of computers. a screen showing where all of Beijing's subways were at all times. Pretty neat.
Afterwards, we went to the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall, a museum focusing on both the history and current development taking place in Beijing. The most amazing part of the museum was a giant 3D model of all of Beijing. Here it is:
More pictures of the museum in the album.
The first half of the pictures in the album are from Saturday's trip to Longqing Xia, considered one of Beijing's most beautiful sites. The main attraction there was bungee jumping. After convincing myself that I was going to jump... I decided just to watch. Some pretty neat pictures and videos in the album though.
Meanwhile, the work continues to build up. Our schedule has changed slightly. Rather than have two small drill classes in the morning, we have one long one, followed by a short "debate" class - two students one teacher. In the afternoon, we are now expected to prepare a five minute summary of a news story every day. Speaking Chinese is difficult enough on its own. Similarly, discussing Obama's health care policy, or China's Tibet and Taiwan problems, or the U.S.'s role in world affairs, in ENGLISH isn't easy. Combining the two... not fun.
But somewhat exciting. Before coming here I could hardly complete a full sentence. Now I can kind of debate current events. "Kind of" meaning I probably sound like a third grader doing it. I guess that's not too bad.
Unbelievably, there are only three more weeks. Still, lots to go - including a badminton match with my host father and some of his friends scheduled for sometime next week. And two more regular tests and a final. Nothing else new for now. Here's this week's photo album (HBA Week 6):
"Lots of things have made me feel unintelligent living in Beijing."
ReplyDeleteLOL! Yes, this 'unintelligent' feeling is a good sign that you're actually pushing yourself and getting a lot out of the experience. You'll be smarter in the end for having done so many "dumb" things. =)