Unbelievably, there is only one more week of HBA. 5 days of class, packing Friday afternoon, then my flight is Saturday afternoon. Then home. I've very much enjoyed my summer here, and am going to miss living here, but there are few things I've looked forward to more than coming home.
Anyway, an eventful week. Last Sunday afternoon, my friend Dominic and I played tennis again. This time, after we finished, one of the tennis teachers there came up to us and asked if we could play together some time. He said he could bring a friend to play doubles. Agreed. Tuesday afternoon, 3:00. America vs. China. To heighten the drama, several hundred (maybe a thousand) students were practicing on the nearby soccer field for some upcoming ceremony (included in the pictures). PLA soldiers had them marching in unison. The Chinese national anthem was playing. Other HBA students passed by us and said "Go America!" And... we lost. Damn it. 5-7, 4-6. To be fair, Dominic was injured, and I was exhausted. And they were very, very good. But, we lost. Hopefully there's still time for a rematch.
Wednesday night was badminton with my host father and his friends again. This time his friends actually came. I discovered that Chinese class and Chinese homework is really bad for staying in shape. Unbelievably tiring. Much faster-paced than tennis. I won one singles match and one doubles. Lost two singles and one doubles. Very fun. Starting my homework at 9:30 (the longest word list of the summer and a 500 character essay) was not fun.
Thursday night: jiaozi contest. Jiaozi are basically dumplings. You roll a little dough, put some type of meat or vegetable or both in the middle, then fold it up. There's an incredibly unresponsive and good restaurant a couple blocks away that some students go to almost every day for lunch. For some reason, they decided to hold a jiaozi eating contest. The turnout was far higher than expected: 24 in total, including around 8 teachers. Rather than have an individual competition as planned, we split up into two tables. Whichever table ate the most... just won. No prize. It was hysterical. The waiters would bring in a plate of jiaozi, and in seconds they were all gone. Each plate has 15, and each table had 12 people. So they just disappeared. Unfortunately (or fortunately), people kind of lost interest in the competition and wanted to get back to study for the next day's test. So for the people remaining, we decided to order a few extra plates and have a speed-eating contest. First to finish wins. My team one. What a gross experience. My stomach hurt all of the next day. Not conducive to taking a test. Pictures of the competition included in the album.
Then an interesting and kind of strange weekend. My host family had planned to take us out to eat Beijing Kao Ya (Peking Duck) on Sunday. Friday night, most of my friends decided to go out to eat... Peking duck. Rather then eat alone somewhere else, I said screw it and joined them. Very, very good. Not sure I would spend 100 kuai (about $14-$15.00) again though. Not enough food for the money. Better when it's given to you free by your host family, like on Sunday.
Unfortunately, Kao Ya wasn't the only double experience of the weekend. After Friday's dinner, everyone decided to head to Sanlitunr, one of Beijing's two big bar areas. We started at a small bar named Smuggler's (because they have very cheap drinks) then went to a bigger club called Vic's (everyone wanted to dance - I hate dancing but that is irrelevant). At Vic's a few students met the manager and started chatting (he had a Lamborghini parked out front by the way). He said he would let us all in for free on Friday if... we promised to bring over 100 people the next night. He said he would reserve a private room for all of us. Deal. So, Saturday night after HBA's talent show (which I did not participate in), all of HBA (teachers included) went right back to Vic's. Oh right - someone had the great idea of going to Smuggler's first to get some cheap drinks. It was fun hanging out with everyone, including the teachers (who showed a side of them not usually seen in class), but the whole time I was thinking: did I really just spend my Friday and Saturday night doing the exact same thing? Something I don't even like doing? Oh well. It was better than hanging out alone in my room.
Sunday was duck meal #2. I never actually lied, but I never actually let on that I had already had it. I don't think they would have cared anyway. And after lunch, we went to check out the Olympic stadiums.
Why a fitting final weekend? Last summer, I had no intention to study Chinese. I thought I was going to continue French, get rid of my language requirement as soon as possible, and move on. And then the Olympics happened, and I said to myself, Beijing seems like an interesting place. It would be really cool to learn some Chinese and travel there one day. I wasn't planning on using French for anything anyway so I said what the hell, I'll try Chinese. And here I am, writing from Beijing, not fluent, but able to speak a lot of Chinese. One year and one day later. And today, I finally got to see the buildings that (kind of) brought me here. Not really sure how to describe the feeling, but it was a little overwhelming.
Sorry to get philosophical, but it's strange how life works. Not to say that Chinese will play a big role in my life in the future, but it certainly has played a big role already. I have spent the last year taking a quiz every single day. I spent my summer in China. I am continuing Chinese at school next year. And right now, I'm considering coming back here next summer (not yet certain, and not yet sure to do what). All because of some buildings. Not that those buildings changed everything, but they gave me the idea to try Chinese out. And from there, things just kind of fell into place (like Yale giving me a whole lot of money to come here for free - why not?). So it was fitting to finally see the 鸟桥 (niaoqiao - Bird's nest) and 水立方 (shuilifang - Water Cube). In many ways I don't think I could have left Beijing without seeing them.
Alright. One more week to go. Here are this week's pictures (HBA Week 8):
http://picasaweb.google.com/LouisGilbert15
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Life is definitely like that! Also, nobody just gave you money, you know. We invested in you. =)
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