First 3 days!

Well, my first 3 days in China were a whirlwind of activity! After getting off the plane, my group went straight to our hotel, which was quite nice actually. The only problem or grievance I had was that the shower compartment was really small, but it's uniqueness made up for that. It had so many sites that water spewed from that I found myself taking longer than average showers simply to play and fiddle with the knobs...I successfully managed to get every site to emit water! (It was a great achievement, because the directions were in Chinese, and I didn't fully understand it, and the English translation was so broken that it would have served just as well NOT being there.) I digress, well my successful tweaking of the shower brought me an immense amount of joy, but the same cannot be said for my roommate, Justin, because when he took his shower after me, one of the nozzles happened (by pure coincidence) to be aimed at his face (I had absolutely nothing to do with this...!) But, I did laugh when I heard him yell, I also heard a sound that sounded an awful lot like him falling or something being dropped...

After dropping off our luggage in our rooms, and showering, we headed into the city to begin our tour. Our first stop was the site of the 2008 Olympics, called the Bird's Nest. When we arrived I was really excited, I thought I was gonna see some amazing things, you know...like maybe that druggie Phelps would show up and give us a tour of the Water Cube. That didn't happen, we walked around a huge empty area. We did see some pretty sweet buildings, there was one that was designed to have the outline of a dragon. ( I took a picture of it, and will add it to the slide show soon!) We saw the Water Cube, it looks good in the day time, but our 北京导游(tour guide) told us that it is dazzling at night, when the city lights and the high powered beams at its base are shining on it. There was also a stadium that was built so cunningly that whereever you sat inside, you would be the same distance from the center! I don't know exactly how this works, and may have misunderstood my guide, but there you have it. I still think that if someone sat in front of you, that person would be closer to the center...  Shortly thereafter our guide told us we had an hour to see whatever we wanted and to meet back at the tour bus. I saw some really nice statues, spoke some horrible Chinese to this old Chinese guy who laughed and just said 'Hello' in English, and met my guide back at the bus. Afterwards we went to eat our very first Traditional Chinese meal.

A lot of Chinese culture centers around the dining table, this is where the bulk of networking, deepening of friendships, and general conversation takes place. Our meal started with tea, EVERY meal starts with tea, if it is a traditional meal. After the tea is placed on a Lazy Susan-like contraption, the other dishes follow; Meat dishes in sauce, vegetable dishes in sauce, rice, soda (Normally Coke or Sprite), with the very last dish being fruit. Once the fruit is served, it is time for you to leave. So if you ever find yourself partaking of a Chinese meal, and your host serves you fruit, get your coat ready and tighten the laces of your walking shoes, cause he wants you gone, lol. Not really, but it does signal the end of the meal, no more dishes follow. Feel free to chat it up after you've eaten fruit. The real signal to leave, is when you're host stands and makes a remark concerning time, hearing this you're suppose to vacate the premises. When you do leave, your host may accompany you for a portion of your journey home, the longer your host accompanies you, the more he/she respects you. All in all, the meal was great, as was every meal I've eaten here so far. But, with all of these meals, I've had two revelations unveil themselves to me; one being that I HATE tea, and the other is that the Chinese use a heck of a lot of oil when they cook. A surprising facet of the restaurant that we went to was that it was also a jewelry/other stuff store. It specialized in pearls. Immediately following our meal, we were given a demonstration on how to remove pearls from clams. Apparently there are fresh water and salt water clams. Fresh water clams normally produce anywhere from 12 to two dozen pearls in one go, whose colors are pink, black, white and an off white color. The salt water clams only produce one (lazy prats), and the colors are either white or gold. We were also taught how to distinguish real pearls from fake; if you rub a supposed pearl and it is rough, it is authentic, but if it is smooth then it is about as good as tea, which is to say not at all! If you cannot tell if it is rough or smooth, simply rub to pearls together, then wipe them with your finger, and light white dust should come off it is real. After our meal and pearl session - and after I bought my mom a pearl necklace, we went to the 颐和园 (Summer Palace).

The Summer Palace is the last imperial resort built in feudal China. It consists mainly of the Longevity Hill and the Kunming Lake. Hills and water surfaces are studded with a host of palaces, temples, chambers, and kiosks, and the Western Hills in the distance combine with the nearby Jade Spring Hill and the pagoda atop it to form a beautiful backdrop. It is considered a veritable record book about the life and political activities of the imperial family of the Qing Dynasty; Apparently, a Dowagess, the late wife of an Emperor, decided that she liked power too much to just let it slip from her gilded hands. So, she chose first her son, and later when he died, her nephew to assume the throne after her husband kicked Bhudda's bucket. During each of their reigns, it was she who ruled, for her son was very weak willed, and her nephew was no stronger. During her tyrannical rule she had a birthday (Go figure!), and on said birthday, decided that a Summer Palace would be an awesome birthday gift to give one's self, so she did...oh! She also gifted herself with a marble boat to boot, which was made out of wood because marble doesn't float, and painted to resemble marble, which I thought was devlishly clever. (Side note, the boat was later destroyed during one of the many invasions of China, by the Hans I think, I'm not exactly sure, so don't quote me...) I wish I could pamper myself like this one day, maybe gift myself with a marble skidoo? Back to the story, the Dowagess, in return for all of her past actions, was gifted by the people with the fitting name of Dragon Lady. Oh, and as a random fact for you, she was the first person in China, maybe Asia altogether, to use a telephone. After seeing the Summer palace, our day ended, we went to our hotel, where I promptly took another shower so that I might have a second go at all of those beautiful knobs, and fell asleep.....and woke up at 3A.M because jet lag lagged the dickens out of me!

Day 2 began with breakfast! It was really good, well the food that I ate was anyway. There was some unholy things on the breakfast buffet table. There were these boiled eggs that were brown, I'm not talking about the shell, the actual part that should be white was brown, so I passed that over quickly. I held my plate extra high, just in case it decided to jump on my plate of its own accord...you can never be too sure in a foreign country. After breaking our fast, we headed to 天安门广场 Tian'An Men Square, which roughly translates into Heaven's gate. Tian'An Men Square was originally the main entrance to the imperial palace in Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the past, emperors promulgated imperial edicts from the gate tower when grand celebration ceremonies were held. After China was 'liberated', this square became the symbol of New China. As a fitting result, the governing officials built the government building there. We left the square forty minutes later, and after I took a thousand photos with Nationals; everyone wanted to take pictures with the black guy, at first it was flattering, then it became ridiculous. During pictures, the Chinese has this weird habit of rubbing your ear lobe during the picture, it was a little unnerving, and after the fifth/sixth time, I began artfully avoiding the weird caress. From the square we went underground for a brief jaunt, and emerged to merge into a huge line entering the 故宫(Palace Museum)

The Palace Museum, formally called the Forbidden City, is located in the center of Beijing. Actually it was quite close to my hotel. It extends 750 meters from east to west and 960 meters from north to south, the 720, 000 square meter city is the largest palatial complex in the world. It served as the seat of imperial power during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1911), needless to say the Dragon Lady resided here! The city was divided into 3 sections with the outer most available for commoners, the middle for important governing officials, and the innermost for the imperial family and their attendants and such. A cool fact about the Forbidden City, is that in each square located within, each of the Chinese elements can be found; Air,Water, Fire, Earth, and Metal. On each structure was little gargoyle-like structures, who's purpose was to keep evil/bad spirits away. Another cool fact is that it has 9,999 rooms within it. The emperors considered themselves the sons of God, and since no son can have more than his father, and since they saw 10,000 as the perfect number, consigned themselves to have only 1 less. It is said that if you live in each room for only one day, constantly moving to another, it would talk roughly thirty years to live in them all! Walking through all that was exhausting, and by the end, we all wanted to sit down and do absolutely nothing, by the end I heartily wished for a segway. Of course we didn't, but we wanted to. Following the Palace of 'oh my God it takes a long time to walk through!' was the 天坛 (Temple of Heaven) and a nice ride to see a Chinese childrens' play at the National Grand Theater.

The Temple of Heaven is my favorite place so far. It is located in southern Beijing, it was built in 1420, during the regn of Emperor Yongle. It covers an area of 2,730,000 square meters, and is the site upon which emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties offered sacrifices to Heaven, and prayed for rain and a good harvest. It was a long walk, and honestly, I stopped listening to our guide, because I began distractedly thinking, "Who the HELL would want to do all of this walking in one day!", we walked somewhere around 12-15 miles so far, not even including the distance to and from the bus, and we were no where near done yet! So, I won't regale you with fuzzy facts...after the temple of Heavenly Fatigue, we went to the theater.

The play wasn't performed by children, but rather it was meant to be performed for them. The play was about the Monkey King, and I really enjoyed watching them sing and dance to the music, but I had no idea what they were saying. So, I understood very little during the first half of the show, during intermission a fellow study abroad student filled me in on the actual book, and what was suppose to happen during the second half, so, I could roughly follow it thereafter. The Monkey King was a bit of a douche to everyone, he went up to heaven and beat up all of the guys/gods up there, encountered bhudda and ended up pissing on his hand. Bhudda slammed a mountain on top of him, thus trapped the Monkey King was unable to do anything. Along came a wondering monk, who freed the Monkey King after placing some helmet on him, which allowed the monk to exert his will and control the Monkey King....so on and so forth, the Monkey King becomes a disciple and becomes a Bhudda eventually, along with a pig, and his monk master guy. There was another disciple who was a monster, literally, but he didn't make the cut, because he was a coward as well. End scene: Went to sleep, woke up at 4A.M and hated life until it was time for breakfast...damn jet lag!

Breakfast was good, still avoided those most questionably hued eggs though! Day 3 was pretty fun and I had my first adventure. We went to 香山(Fragrant Hill), which, upon arrival, I duly named Stinky Mountain. There were a lot of flowers, but the area surrounding the 'hill' (it was a mountain, I have the pictures to prove it!) emitted some really...interesting aromas. I chose to join three of my fellow students; Trevor, Michael (Sonar), and Koblar (That is his first name, and he is American). We walked for a bit, and decided we want to ride the cable car to the top of the mountain. So, we navigated our way to the station where tickets were available for purchase, and purchased what we thought were round-trip tickets. They were not, and we were screwed! Upon reaching the top of the mountain, we had to go back down by foot. It was tortuous, I've been exposed to some difficult tasks what with being in the army and all, but....this was horrible. It was hellishly hot, and I only had a half bottle of water for sustenance. Thus armed, we began our trip down the mountain.

It started off easy enough, the stairs were cut into the mountain so it was easy going...at first. I don't know who supervised the cutting of those stairs, but whoever did it must have taken a break, or died! The stairs became hazardous, slanting steeply, becoming jaged, and at some points they were not stairs so much as they were a collection of rocks. We had to tread carefully during this point. We all were breathing hard, had sweat pouring down our faces, backs, legs, hell I think my soul was sweating too! We passed a lot of Chinese nationals, who'd given up and sat down to massage their legs, and whatnot. There was this one Chinese woman who was terribly fit. She yelled , "快点儿，快点儿!", which means go faster! We moved over and let her pass, she passed, and then began yelling at the people who were then ahead of her. After descending about a mile and a half, the stairs became safer, and we could pick up the pace. I forgot to mention that we only had an hour and a half to get back to the bus...so, about 2 and a half miles of stairs later, with a couple of short rest breaks, we reached the road, and began walking back to the bus. About half way down the mountain, my legs were shaking like the dickens, and I thought I was gonna go tumbling down the mountain, I later learned that all of us felt that way. We reach the bus, and find out we have to walk even farther to go eat lunch.

At lunch, we get the opportunity to try the famous Peking Duck, it was great! After lunch I got to peruse a shop that sells swords and knives, and nunchucks. I decided then that I'd buy a sword and send it home. I didn't purchase it from that place, but I will get one soon.

Our tour ended there, we filed on the bus and headed tothe University where we were to study,  南开大学(Nankai University). in Tianjin, China. The bus ride was really long; we were in a traffic jam that put any ever experienced in the U.S. to shame. People were walking past us, and we were going so slow, that we never passed them again! At one point we stood still for nigh on an hour. The reason for the traffic jam was a vehicular accident, in China, they don't respond very effectively to accidents and such. But, this prompted our guide to present us with a surprising fact; In Northern China there are 3 accidents each day, on average. I say surprising because the Chinese drive like a herd of wildebeast stampedes! They rarely even acknowledge the lanes lines, often times driving into oncoming traffic, they honk continuously, and cutting people off here is the norm. I could not...no...would not drive here, ever! We got to the University eventually, received our room keys, picked up our laundry cards, dropped off our stuff, and went out for a tour of Tianjin...

I will stop here, I think I've written too much and will give you a reprieve. But I will give you an update on my new camera; it is very well behaved, and it doesn't give me any 'lip' or trouble like the last one. There was this one time, in Tian'An Men Square, where it thought to test it's limits by shutting off at inappropriate times...but after I threatened to remove his 'batteries', he snapped right back in line! You have to put down rebellious tendencies early, if you wait, you'll have a more difficult time of it...

 Till next time!

-罗可斯

Departure...

It seems that I’m a little back logged with this blog, because a lot has happened between my last posting, and this one. So, bear with me, I will try my utmost to make this an enjoyable read…


Prior to my flight, a co-worker of mine, Diane Lane, treated me to dinner and a movie. We were also accompanied by her son, Sam, and another co-worker of ours, Sue McGhee. Our outing didn’t lack for fun, as Diane is hilarious, and her son, true to form, had me laughing as well. The funniest thing about Diane this particular night was the scream she emitted during our viewing of Nightmare on Elm Street. If you’re ever invited to accompany her to a horror/suspense thriller, please refuse because in conjunction to her hysterical screams, she hits the nearest person quite hard, and when she’s not doing either of those two things, she’s shrinking back into her seat whimpering. So, needless to say, I didn’t see the entire movie, because I was distractedly laughing at Diane for most of it.

From 10pm till about 4am, I hung out with two beautiful people, Ryo Namiki and Lindsay Yax, both of whom stayed up with me, so that I would be able to sleep on my 14+ hour flight. I lost to Lindsay in rummy (I let her win), and tried to get Ryo to play any song that I might recognize on his guitar (the kid doesn’t know how to play anything remotely ethnic or easy on the ears…just kidding)

The flight, despite my preparation, was long and torturous. The flight attendant was more suited to being a drill sergeant. A fact that she affirmed each and every time she spoke with a passenger. She ordered one of my Study Abroad group members to remove hs bag from the overhead department, and put it somewhere else, and gave him a look that had me sitting up straight and buckling my seatbelt1 The meals were okay, except for the final one. Which was a turkey sub sandwich, and caused for me to pine for the end of the flight, at which I could rapidly seek an isolated bathroom? I will never again eat a turkey sandwich on a plane…!

Getting through customs was uneventful, and relatively quick and painless. I found my study abroad Director straight away, and also my 北京导游Beijing Daoyou(Bay-gee-ungh-Dow-yo), which means Beijing Guide. For the first 3 days, we were to go on a sight-seeing tour, visiting Beijing’s most prominent and popular attractions, which I will further describe tomorrow. For tonight I have experienced my first Chinese bar(s), and am now too sleepy to narrate anymore of my experiences. What I will put down for your eyes is that tonight I met the world’s coolest Chinese kid, his name is Feng Yue (His American name was Steven, but my companions and I thought that too bland a name, and subsequently dubbed him Sonar.) I will post his picture soon…and with that I will bid you a good night, or good day…sorry again for the hurried writing, I will make it up to you in my next posting, I promise!

再见，
            -罗可斯（Marcus)

Prior to Departure - The Sequel

Hey guys! Just thought I'd hit you with a couple of updates before I leave the land of my birth! I have been trying mightily to pack, and have had some success. If it wasn't for that evil monster commonly referred to as 'this is boring and I'm gonna go do something that's not', I'd have most definitely completed this task by now.

Yesterday I drove home to have a 'Going Away' barbecue with mi familia, and as usual I had a great time! My nieces and nephew, who will be referred to as 'the kids', were a joy to be around, despite the fact that they thoroughly defeated me. I've long since been hip to their plot to take over the world one adult a time, and I think the kids underestimate themselves, they can probably defeat close to a thousand at once. Three of my sisters were there, Micheale, Ariel, and Tamar, and my oldest sister Juandell put in an appearance later on that night. None of my brothers were present; my twin brother is in Hawaii (which is certainly not an excuse by any means, and I told him so!), and my oldest brother is pretty darned old, and probably forgot - I told him that puzzles will keep his mind agile, but apparently he didn't heed my wisdom. Honestly don't know why I try! My mom was there, and she laughed a ton, which is always good to hear - you'd understand if you ever heard it. Oh, her name is JoAnne by the way. We teamed up to play some cards against Ariel and Micheale, and we actually won! (they won some games too, but this is my blog, and I won't allow any stealing of my thunder! Take that Ariel!) I actually arrived at the dinner around 4ish, in time to eat and enjoy the fruits of their labor, but I wasn't in time to assist in any way. Which is most unfortunate, for nothing makes me more happy than to slave away in a kitchen or over a hellishly hot barbecue grill. I was at the dinner till about 10:45, then headed home. On the way, a friend deemed it appropriate to harrass me via cell phone text (Eric Stanko), which kept me alert for the majority of my drive. But, after that I was really tired, and had to drink an energy drink to make the rest of the drive. Which works great by the way, because after I'd gotten home I was totally wired, and ended up going to my future roommate's apartment (Ryo Namiki) and bugged him till about 1:30 A.M. I had so much energy that I swept his floor! Energy drinks at night = not sleeping.

Oh, one last update, concerning that blasted nomadic camera! It didn't allow itself to be located for a couple days, and consequently I ordered one to be delivered to my apartment tomorrow. True to its rebellious and contentious personality, yesterday it saunters into my apartment with a smug attitude and an irritating smirk on it's evil electronic face. Actually, I found it in the bottom of a closet, UNDER a bunch of shoes and a bookbag (don't know how it got there!) But it will be I who gets the last laugh, instead of returning the new camera, I'm gonna check it out and see if it's better, and if it is...Let's just say that my wayward appliance will soon find that its assigned place on my dresser has been given to another! (evil laugh here?? not sure if it's appropriate...)

Prior to Departure

So guys! I have one week, exactly, before I'm on a plane headed to China. I'm really excited! So much so that everyday seems to drag by...ugh! It's truly torturous. So, to keep myself distracted, I've been doing some cleaning, packing (not really), and some research on China. It seems that China is a country that loves to block sites that are essential to life, you know...sites like Facebook, blog sites, and anything else that is fun or social in nature. So, I faced my first challenge, how to bypass the Chinese Government's control of the internet. I am happy, and not a little excited, to say that I have succeeded. Thanks to a friend who's already over there in China, I have been armed with a program that fulfills my needs. So, have no fear, I will be able to relay my experiences while abroad.

Now, my next challenge is to actually pack and find my digital camera, which, for some strange reason, has taken in its mind to run off to some unknown locale. Hopefully it returns soon, or it will have to be replaced! I cannot condone wayward appliances, they must know their place, which is on my dresser!

Okay, that's it for now! I will hopefully have found my camera, and had a wonderful start to my Chinese experience by the next blog entry!!

-Markie Marc