Wednesday, December 25, 2013

...CHRISTMAS! ^.^

IT’S CHRISTMAS!

As such, merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and happy holidays to everyone in the world!

This past week I’ve been busy with preparing final essays, and for the final exams I have tomorrow and next week. I did make time to celebrate Christmas though.

In China, Christmas is not considered a national holiday, and as such, students are not allowed to have time off to celebrate. Yesterday I had all of my classes, and since I am an obedient student, I attended all of them without complaint. Since I am living in a different country, I believe it is best to respect the rules and customs of other cultures even if that means I must change my own habits for a short time. I was lucky for Christmas day though, because I only have one morning class, so I spent the rest of the day skyping with my family, going to a Christmas party with some of my friends, and then spending the evening preparing for tomorrow’s classes.

My Christmas was a very satisfying one, even though it is my first time celebrating Christmas without being with my family back home. My parents sent me some presents, which included lots of smartwool clothes and chocolate. These gifts made me very happy because after exams are over, I’m going to go visit Harbin with some of my classmates. Harbin is a city in northern China which is known for its ice sculpture festival, and extremely cold temperatures during winter. These smartwool clothes will be put to good use. Thank you so much mom and dad!

Here's some pictures of my AWESOME smartwool clothes:





I also had fun explaining to my roommate what Christmas is. She is from Thailand, and since the main holiday there is the New Year (similar to China), Christmas is typically only celebrated by foreigners. She told me that a lot of her classmates who are westerners were complaining about not having time off to celebrate Christmas, and that she didn’t understand why Christmas was so important. It was quite fun to explain it to here, and I gave Bam her first ever Christmas present, which was a chocolate Santa and a red scarf. Bam told me that she really liked it, which made me happy. She’s been a great roommate and friend, and I wanted to get her something nice during this time of the year.

She also gave me a present today:



Today when I went to class I learned an interesting fact. My hanyu teacher asked me if I had given any apples to my friends yesterday, and when I said no, she asked if I wasn’t celebrating Christmas. I told her that I gave my friends chocolate, and asked why I would give them apples. Apparently in China people give each other apples on Christmas Eve because the Chinese word for Christmas Eve has a character which sounds similar to a character in the Chinese word for apple.

Christmas Eve: 平安夜 (Píng'ān yè)
Apple: 苹果 (Píngguǒ)


After class I went to a Christmas party hosted by my friend Christianna, the girl who is in charge of our trip to Harbin during winter break. She’s lived here for a year already, and she thought it would be fun if everyone came by, watched Christmas movies, drank mulled wine, and exchanged gifts (we did a white elephant exchange, which was EXTREMELY fun).

Here's a picture of some of the people who came to celebrate (there were twenty of us at one point in Christianna's room):


(She also made this tree for the holidays too!)

(And this was just a fun calender in her room. It reminded me of Christmas...)

(We also played Uno with mini Uno cards, one of the gifts from the gift exchange)

For the gift exchange, I eventually got the following (due to there being so many people, it took a long time for people to exchange gifts and figure out who finally would get what, but it was a lot of fun!):


(these are socks, in case the picture looked strange)


I am very lucky to live in such a great community with fantastic friends. I am also forever grateful to have Skype, because I know I would not be as happy today without being able to see my family who has been completely supportive of me in every way. I love you mom, dad, Vicki, Andrew, grandma, and all my other awesome relatives!


HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!

(Yum!)

Monday, December 16, 2013

Apologies, Winter, and Illnesses

Hello everyone,

First off, I’d like to apologize for not updating my blog for the past two weeks. I was going to update it last week, but unfortunately I got a virus and felt very sick until recently when I went to the hospital to get medicine. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t feeling too well and am sorry. I’ve also been busy trying to figure out where I should visit during winter break. PKU students don’t have Christmas off because that isn’t a holiday celebrated here, but from the beginning of January till the middle of February I have a month long vacation time. But this also means having to plan ahead and buy tickets as soon as possible, particularly if you want to travel during the Chinese New Year (also known as the Spring Festival), because train tickets and plain tickets become sold out very quickly. As such, I’ve been a little stressed with figuring that out. I do have one thing finally planned though. Right after my final exams, I am going to visit Harbin, a city in northern China which has an ice festival. I’m going to be traveling with some classmates and friends from school, so after I return from that (probably around January 10th), I should have some awesome pictures for you.

So last week nothing particularly interesting happened, but the week before that I went to Sanlitun, a district in Beijing which is known for having lots of embassies and foreigners. My Korean language partner’s girlfriend, Min, my friend Janie, one of her roommates, and I all went out to see the shopping mall there. Janie had told me that there were really pretty Christmas decorations that I should see, but since it was during the day and the pollution level was over 400, it wasn’t quite as glamorous as she remembered it. Still, if one evening the air is clear and I have time, I might go back to see what it’s like. 

Here’s a couple pictures:









(My friend Janie and her roommate)

While we were at the mall we saw an exhibition of children's artwork which was being sold to raise money for disabled children.









(This statue is actually similar to two others I saw in Wudaokou. I actually have pictures of these other statues in an earlier post, but I have yet to find out who the artist of these sculptures is)



We also ate Persian food. There are actually a lot of Middle Eastern restaurants in the area we explored, and the food we had was fantastic!

Here’s what I ordered:


Don't worry, I didn't over stuff myself. The large platter has lamb, beef, chicken, rice, a tomato, and a tomato sauce. The large platter is also meant to be shared with two people, so I split it with Min.

Speaking of which...

(This is Min, my Korean language partner's girlfriend. She's really awesome!)

(Janie on the right and her roommate on the left. I unfortunately forgot her name because Janie has two other roommates, so I keep mixing up who is who)

Desert: Colibri cupcakes. Flavors (from the green going clockwise): mint, cookies and cream, chocolate, mocha. Mine was the mocha, and it was glorious to eat such a wonderful cupcake!

Dinner was delicious! It reminded me a bit of home when my dad would take us out to get Middle Eastern or Mediterranean food back home. It was also really nice to eat solid, real meat.

After looking at some of the embassies and exploring in general, I went back to Janie’s apartment to watch an Indian movie which we began in October but hadn't finished until two weeks ago.

Since the semester is ending in January we're all preparing for our exams, final essays and presentations, etc., which is a little sad because lots of people will be leaving to go back to their home countries (those who are staying for only a semester that is, most other people are just traveling during the month long break). 

I’m afraid I don’t have much else to report from here. Getting sick really sucked though. Everyone here at school is sick, and in my dorm everyone has the same type of illness I have. I’m worried that my roommate will be next (she’s already showing the symptoms I had), and the last thing I want is for her, or anyone else for that matter, to get what I had. It was miserable, but I’m taking medicine that the doctor prescribed to me which is helping a lot.

I wish everyone back home good health!

P.S.


I got a haircut today ^.^

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Thankgsiving, Holiday Spirit, and Contests

Hello everyone! This week was more peaceful than the last, but definitely more eventful (if that makes sense).

Last week was the International Students Speech Contest, where one student from all the classes for Chinese as a second language compete by performing four minute long speeches. Because there are so man classes, the contest is divided into five days with about ten or so classes competing against each other, and because the contest takes place in the afternoon, all afternoon classes were cancelled last week (although that didn’t really affect me in the long run because I only have two days where I have afternoon classes, the rest are in the morning).

So our class, class 12, was competing against classes 11, and 13-18 I believe, and my best friend won second place! Her name is Janie, and she’s a brilliant student, so I’m not surprised. Our teacher was though. Apparently most winners are from the more advanced classes, seeing as they have more experience, their levels are higher, etc., but Janie’s topic also impressed the judges a lot too. Our kouyu teacher was so happy that she had our entire kouyu class go out to a restaurant together. It was a lot of fun! I think my kouyu teacher is my favorite teacher here. Not just because we went out to dinner, but because she’s a really good teacher and an interesting person. She’s really helpful when we have trouble understanding new material, and she doesn’t put up with nonsense, which is always a good trait in my book.

For the rest of the week I tried catching up on some of the material I missed last week, due to being sick during the midterm exam, and relaxing after the stressful period of exams.

So yesterday I went to a Christmas market with some of my German friends, which was a lot of fun. It was at the German embassy, out in a courtyard and partially within the main building. There were a ton of people, but the line to get in was moving pretty fast, and because we got there early, we got to go in fairly quickly. Since there wasn’t that much room, people were being let in based on how many people left every few minutes/hours. It was good we got there before they opened.

From what my friends told me the embassy definitely tried to make this event as authentic as possible. The stands apparently looked very much like those that were in the Christmas markets in Germany, the food tasted very authentic (from what I could tell, as I’ve only been to Germany once, and my mom’s side of the family is German so I have some experience in this department), and the music was like that played around Christmas time in Germany.

Here’s some pictures:








(My friends Jule and Teresa with some mulled wine, a must at a Christmas market)




(My delicious bratwurst and black forest chocolate cherry cake)

(A choir singing German Christmas carols) 








(Santa came to give presents to little children, although he looks a bit skinny to me...)

(Another one of my German friends. I believe her name is Elizabeth, but I'm sorry to say I can't remember for sure)

(The food here was fantastic! I'm eating some sort of ham/liverwurst sandwich, which was extremely filling and hearty.)


All in all, it was a very fun event.

I have to say that I really needed something like this. Last Thursday was Thanksgiving at home, and while I had planned to go out with a few people to get Peking duck, those plans fell through. As such, on Thanksgiving, I went out with my German friends to a bakery and had some very yummy pastries.

But going to the Christmas market on Saturday really made me happy. Thanksgiving is a time to be around friends and family, and since I couldn’t celebrate it with my folks back home, I was very happy to be able to do something special with my friends here. I am very grateful to have them here, and to have a loving family waiting for me at home.

Something that I have been noticing recently is that I have a lot of German friends. I’m very tempted to start learning German in addition to Chinese. That would be very beneficial considering I already speak English, Chinese, and a little Spanish. If I could improve my Spanish and learn German, I could become able to speak four languages.

Well, we’ll see what happens.


Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone back home, and best wishes to everyone everywhere else in the world!