The Power of Punctuation

We Teach English, Right?  We Teach English RIGHT! We Teach English? Right! As you can tell, I wouldn’t be the first to suggest this company as an English teacher.

This was all originally written almost a month ago, but I didn’t have access to the blog. I am going to post them now since there are so many experiences I didn’t get to post yet.

My first week in China!

Although I arrived a day late, my experience in Beijing was incredible. There were a lot of things I noticed right away. The money was different, the street signs were different, the driving rules were different, the lifestyle was different. But as I started to spot these differences, I also noticed so many similarities between the United States and China.

In China and the United States, providing for your family and making sure they have a good life is very important. It was easy to tell that the people living in China put a lot of time and effort into creating and maintaining a good family life. I also noticed that as much as I want to learn about China, they want to learn just as much about America.

After landing at PEK, the largest international airport in the world, being delayed an entire day, not sleeping much on the plane, and having trouble locating luggage, I was too tired to think much more beyond getting food into my mouth and putting one foot in front of the other, but our taxi driver had other plans. I was so excited to finally be able to use my Chinese for the first time while actually being in China, but I was not at all prepared for the driver’s relentless attack. He asked me question after question about America. Everything ranging from “How much would this car cost in America?” to “Teach me how to count to ten!” It was also 6:00 p.m. on a Tuesday evening (May 12th) while we were on our way to the hotel, so we had a LONG drive due to the Beijing rush hour traffic. 30 minutes later, I never realized how important it was to remember all of the Chinese vocabulary words I was taught. I definitely had a good plunge into the language upon arrival.

That night our professor, Xinli Wu, took the 5 late arrivals out to get dinner. The drinking culture in China is very different than America. A lot of people drink at younger ages here and there really is no restriction on alcohol, however people don’t tend to abuse alcohol here from what I have seen and heard. So over a 2 hour period 12 beers were shared, we got to try some authentic Chinese dishes, and we got to learn more about how the Chinese toast. We also were properly trained to use chopsticks – some making out better than others.

5/13 – The second day, I woke up extremely tired. After having a meal with almost everything I could possibly want for breakfast present, we drove about 1 hour and 30 minutes to reach the Great Wall. I thought I knew a decent amount of facts about the Great Wall, but until I stood in front of it and walked up it, I did not fully understand its true significance and power.

 

The biggest shock I had while climbing the wall was that the stairs were very uneven. You could have a change in elevation ranging from 3 to 16 inches between one step and the next. This made climbing the wall a real workout. After climbing the Great Wall, I cannot imagine how soldiers used to run up and down the wall carrying equipment and weapons, but I do have a great respect for their drive to protect their territory.

Although everyone did not end up making it to the top of the wall, many of us did. We had to take a selfie at the top to signify our accomplishment.

 

It was beautiful. You could see mountains in every direction and could look down and see tiny cars driving along the road. It was a terrific view, one that I think would be hard to ever forget.

After visiting the Great Wall, I was so tired that I could barely function, but I somehow was able to muster up the energy to eat. After lunch, we went to explore the Bird’s Nest and the Olympic Village before we headed to Silk Street. The Bird’s Nest seemed a lot bigger inside than any stadium I have ever been in, but our tour guide said it only held 100,000 people. The seats were a lot further apart than Beaver Stadium which added to its size.

When we first arrived at Silk Street I felt kind of dumb…because it wasn’t a street at all. I would compare it to the most condensed New York City Macy’s you could ever imagine. There were probably 100 stores per floor, all crowded so close together and each store was only between 50 and 200 square feet large. Somehow, I woke up in a way that I never thought imaginable. At first, I stuck with a few of the Chinese students that are taking the class with us, because I wanted them to help me buy items. Then I thought, “I can do this on my own,” I broke away and started bargaining like crazy. A side of me that I didn’t know existed started shining through. I started bargaining with the shopkeepers in Chinese, I was buying things left and right and was having a great time. I bought 5 or 6 items and did not even spend more than $50. It was a great experience.

After Silk Street we went to see a Kungfu show. It was really impressive and there were boys around the age of 5 or 6 years old doing back-handsprings on their heads. It might be hard to imagine, and YouTube is blocked in China, so…happy searching!

(5/14) The next day we woke up at 6:45 a.m. (again) and ate a delicious breakfast. We then went to Tiananmen Square for a group picture and then went to the National Museum of China. We explored the museum for 2 hours and I got to see a lot of artifacts from ancient times. There were so many beautiful ceramic pieces and works of art. I was most impressed by the fact that at one point I was looking at an incense burner from the 700’s and I thought, “wow that is really cool, I would buy that.” For the craft to be that perfected and amazing at that point in history impressed me.

Later that day, we traveled to Beijing University of Mining and Technology. It was really great to be able to interact with other college students. We were able to relate to them in many ways and also learn a lot about China and their culture from them. I learned that deep down, we are all pretty similar. After visiting the University, we looked at some lights on buildings throughout Beijing and along Qianmen Street and Changan Street. Once we got back to the hotel, we decided to get in touch with some of the students we had met at the University earlier that day and go to a club with them. We seized the opportunity of being able to get into the club at the ages of 18-21. Once we were there we saw that a lot of the people at the club were sitting around tables drinking wine and eating food. There was a lot of smoking but there wasn’t much dancing. Once we started dancing it seemed like everyone wanted to come to dance with the Americans. It was a lot of fun experiencing this and learning more about the culture here in China.

Yesterday was our final day in Beijing. We woke up even earlier than usual to pack and get ready to check out of the hotel. Once we were all ready and we had shoved 43 suitcases into every possible nook and cranny on the bus, we took off to head to the Temple of Heaven. We explored the grounds at the Temple of Heaven for 2 hours and learned about what the ancient Chinese people did at the grounds. We were taught that they usually had square walls around temples because they thought the earth was square and then the temple itself was round or had a circular focus because they believed heaven was round.

After grabbing some lunch, we headed over to the Summer Palace. This was the most beautiful stop we had in Beijing. There was great marble structure and beautifully painted structures.

We got to cross the lake at the Palace grounds on a dragon boat. Once we got across the lake we walked around for a while and then some of us hiked up to the top of a hill to get a better view of the grounds. I have quickly learned that to get to some of the best sites in China, you have to walk up A LOT of stairs or climb a gigantic mountain.

It was a fun afternoon which ended with us driving to the Beijing Train Station. We took a sleeper train to Dalian and had a great first day, the train was smaller than I expected, just like my dorm room was as well… And I was very disappointed that I didn’t end up at Hogwarts in the morning, but Dalian is equally as nice. I will blog more from Dalian when I get a chance! China has been amazing so far, I can’t wait for what the next 20 days bring!

Location: Beijing, China