迷失的老美

Well, last night I vowed to get to bed early. Seeing as I was up till 6:30 am, it is obvious that didnt happen. Went over to Hou Hai to meet friends/drink/have fun. Turns out that Hou Hai is the most expensive drinking area in Beijing. 20 kuai for a 3 kuai bottle of beer… insane. Was in a bar till they closed at 1:30, then went over to Troy’s dorm room to order food, drink, have some fun, etc. Cool thing was that I met another Japanese student to talk to for a while, my Japanese is starting to get a little weird, Chinese is corrupting it a bit. Funny thing about the food here. You can order it at 2:30 in the morning, but you wont see it till about 4:30. Hence, why I was up so damned late. This really sucked because it was 5:30, I had homework, was dead tired, and had to go on a field trip with the CIEE students in 7 hours. I got about 2 hours of sleep total, but finished all homework.

This post is now about sightseeing:
The field trip today was to Tian’anmen Square (that wonderful place where a protest about government corruption was spun into a protest for democracy a few years back). Being a group of one, I was lumped together with the CIEE students, who are, to say the best of them… interesting. They have the wonderful group dynamics issues that I got to experience in Taiwan. Made me glad that I’m not in a group. They had the typical vegetarian whiners, the non-smokers, and the “show your respect this is a sacred place” cliques. The cliques would be comprised of at most 3 people in each, and despite being the minority, they feel it nececcary to impose their will on the rest of the group by means of whining to the teachers until they get their way. I hate this type of person more than anything. The best part of this trip is a toss up between 2 occurrances. One of the CIEEers is a Japanese, and talking to him was a nice breather. The other candidate was the street venders. They were all selling the same crap: Mao’s red book, Mao wristwatch, Mao lighter, Dragon statue, and postcards. All of it was horribly overpriced, and they were assholes to deal with. Bargaining didnt really work, which is fine because I didnt want any of the crap. So, I started bargaining for fun, 20 kuai for a red book that is poorly made? How about 2 kuai? no? 5 kuai? This seemed to seriously piss some of them off. Which was fair because they were pissing me off. At one point I had a deal for the red Mao book at 5 kuai, the bitch snatched my 5 kuai and tossed it in a begger’s cup. I grabbed the book, then she threw a fit. She then took the money out of the begger’s cup and grabbed the book back, which is when I grabbed by the 5 kuai. They were all scammers and just looking for the first hint of an opening in your defense to grab your money out of your hand.

Anyways, enough with the chitchat, time for pics

Here is a pic of what remains of the wall to the Forbidden City, the rest has been torn down

The gate section is all that remains of the wall

The Square, bad pic #1

The Square, bad pic #2 (I will go back here at some point when it is not raining)

Here’s something unexpected, a Japanese translation of general info on the place

This is a Room that was built for pretty much nothing more than a Chair, built in the 1420s

And, the chair

The next room/building up was used for changing cloths.. that’s pretty much it. Also built in the 1420s (and destroyed countless times by fire)

Another pic of the room

The complex has a few levels it seems, most of which are closed to the public, I dont know if it was my sleep deprevation, or whatever, but it looked cool enough at the time to warrant a few pics.

Another view

They had these everywhere. They were used to hold water, had big lids, and would have fires lit under them in the winter to keep the water from icing over. Nothing special, but they were everywhere and looked cool

The residence of the Emperor. Big, impressive, completely closed off to the public with windows covered in plexiglass that results in all attempted pictures sucking.

Past the palace, there is a really nice nature garden. Complete with old trees that grow at odd angles, and strange rocks. This place was conveniently turned into an overpriced souvineer shop that magically had a discount for me because I was a student. Oddly, everyone else also gets the same discount for various reasons… This is china. This rockwall was really interesting. I dont think any camera could capture the true nature of it, so, here is my poor attempt with a phonecamera

OK, that’s my update, and now I have homework to do

Well, the fan of doom finally broke. I might be able to fix it if I can track down some WD-40, but that seems most unlikey seeing as no one knows what I am talking about. Fans here are oddly expensive too. I managed to track down a new one that moves more air for 68 kuai though… expensive. I also am sick of waking up with sweat, so, I bought a bamboo spread on the advice of a friend here. Wet it down and it absorbs the moisture and stays cool to the touch. It also feels better than the “Mattress” that I have. It was only 70 kuai for the one I got. The other option came with a bag and was 148. The choice was obvious. It was at Wu Mei where I bought it, so bargaining didnt work, but the price is reasonable.

New Pain:
Seems like I will be signing a pledge in the coming days that ban me from speaking anything but Chinese. I have learned enough already that I should be able to rely on it. They are talking about the punishment being 10 kuai a word for each violation that they catch. They said nothing about typing though, so this blog should remain safe… Hey, I need some shred of sanity every so often. Other new pain is that their are far too many americans here now. I am doing my best to avoid them, but quickly, the beida streets filled with chinese speaking are changing to english… I hate this. I must venture further off campus to get away from English.

New Class:
Had my first tutoring session today with my tutor and my teacher. Or rather, they had their first session with me
Their English really isn’t that bad, but their pronunciation sucks kinda. This is what we are focusing on. Most of their syntax errors seemed to be caused by difficulties in saying certain phrases. Such as dropping the “the” in a phrase containing “that the”. Teaching them the correct trick to say it correctly immediately fixed most of this type of error. What did I use for material? I have no books or prepared articles for them to go off of. So I pulled the first thing that came to mind. The Onion
Had them read this article: http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4025&n=1
Oddly they had problems with “billion”. And of course the ‘th’ ‘r’ and ‘l’… which I focused on until they got them right. This will be an interesting experience.

Tomorrow at about 1, I am going down to Tiananmin Square for a field trip… this should be cool.

Pics of course:

对不起，最新我很忙。
It has been a fast week of much studying. Just finished the second week of class and already we are halfway through a book that typically lasts a semester back at UWM. My pronunciation is all pretty good now and the only thing that is throwing me is my tones, which are slowly getting better. They were cool enough to slow down the pace a little because they saw that I just didnt have enough time for it all to sink in at the pace they were going. So far, it looks like I have a nice A in the class, and my speaking is actually getting better, as is my character recognition. Ordering food here is no longer a horrible ordeal. I am not sure of the names of what I am eating, but at least I can let it be known what I want without too much trouble. It’s crazy but this stuff is actually sticking, and the other night I had my first dream in Chinese… it was a horribly stupid dream, but it wasn’t in English, German, or Japanese… so, it was a first for me. The textbook I am using is the Traditional version, on 田老师’s recommendation, however, 王老师 realized that this was stupid because it does me little good here in mainland. So, although the book is traditional, I am learning simplified.

Simplified characters, in short, rock. They are even starting to affect my Japanese. They will be yelling at me in Japan I fear. When there is a simpler way of writing the exact same thing, I am going to write it that way.

Another cool thing, I didn’t just get a job, I got 2 jobs. They are both the standard “let’s teach english” thing, but the pay is good, and I need something to do on my weekends to earn some money. I should be able to make about 600 kuai a week in 6 hours or so. The second of the jobs pays comparatively little, but I would have done it for free if they had just asked. I will be tutoring my tutors and one of my teachers in their pronunciation and syntax, something that most here have a problem with. So, it should be an interesting experience. The higher paying of the jobs I got due to that party early on. A Russian friend happens to run an English tutoring program for the Beida students here, and hooked me up. All my work is done for me already, and anything that I contribute in the way of new method or material will be credited to me. Plus, I basically get free research data for SLA of English. In addition, he has connections with the Linguistics department here and if I do any research, it will take virtually no effort to get published. This would indeed be cool.

On the Yuuki front, I have been unable to talk to her for most of the week. She has been working night shift, and I have been missing talking to her :’( I hope that she manages to get off that shift if she can. My Japanese has been starting to weaken a bit through not using it as much and thinking in Chinese more and more. I really need to maintain it as best I can here. All in all, I am pretty much settled in here now, and just studying everyday while I avoid the CIEE students who all seem to be assholes.

Sorry for the lack of worthwhile pics again… but I really dont have the time.
Here are pics of the bed of doom:

Well, the first chapter of the book is done, and the second chapter is almost done now too. Learning the new characters is incredibly easy, and I tend to get the pronunciation correct if i just see the characters rather than the pinyin. Pinyin is horribly misleading and I hate it. Had my first oral test today too, and it was more fun and involving than any Japanese oral exam I have ever had. I was completely in charge of it and the only thing I had to prepare for was remembering the vocab and grammar. Everything else was just me talking to the tutor. Still, I have a long ways to go… but, a few things are starting to click more now. They were so dead on about it taking 2 weeks to adjust to things. Familiar words are starting to pop up in conversations and I am (at a very basic level) able to respond. Making a few more good friends here too, which is important.

This leads to the topic of the post. I was just offered a part time job teaching less than 10 students 2-3 hours a week. I have been told it is more of a tutoring session. The extra money would be nice to have, and it would take care of pretty much all my living expenses not including housing (which is all paid now anyways). But, at this time, it is important for me to focus on Chinese and little else. This WOULD however put me in more contact with chinese, but also add a horrible element of responsibility… which sucks. I have about a day to think it over before I say yes or no. I will probably take it and see how it goes for a while.

Also, I have a new name now… 我叫台乐迈

I actually learned the word for this and got the tone correct suo3 yin3 ka3. However, I was still greeted by the “what the fuck is he talking about” look when I asked for it. I was rescued by someone from the US who knew what I was talking about. He described it until the people at the store still didn’t know what I was looking for. I gave up and bought some batteries, a trash can (no more slum-like living for me!) and some other stuff I wanted/needed for cheap. This left me in a state of shock… How can there be no such thing as index/note/flashcards on a campus? r u serios? u cannot b serios.

Today started fairly normally enough, class from 9-12 going over pronunciation. I am having a bit of a hard time differentiating between the palatals and retroflexes for some odd reason, possibly because they do not exist in any language I have ever learned and are as alien to me as the uvular ‘h’. Vowels are no longer a problem though, so that is a good thing. This all lead to the reason I was buying batteries. I have this cool little voice recorder that I bought back in the states. But I was stupid enough not to bring the USB/power adapter for some reason, nor batteries that were still good. I discovered this as I was doing my tape recording homework the night before last, only to find that all my work was worthless. Yesterday I got a giant boombox/recorder from tian laoshi (made in america btw), did 2 days worth of homework on it to discover that the mic on it was broken/never worked… oh teh irony. So, I went out and bought new batteries for this damned thing that I know for sure works. 12 kuai for 4 batteries.. YAY!

Before this little venture, I was approached by one of those opportunities that I was afraid of most when coming here. A guy was loitering around the foreigner dorms looking for english speakers to teach for obscene amounts of money in Shanghai and outside of Beijing. Worked out to something like $25 an hour for very little real work. Turned it down because well, I dont know why I turned it down. I need more out of life than that sham of a job. He spoke some Japanese though, so that was a nice change of pace.

It finally rained today. Started in the morning and it is still going. The great thing is that this rain is the most pathetic rain I have ever seen. There is nothing behind it, but it has cleaned up the air and killed the humidity. Seeing people running from building to building with umbrellas in this is just hilarious. After raining all day, we might have gotten a quarter of an inch total. Back to studies…