August 2012
7 posts
2 tags
5 tags
Summer Camp, take 2
The summer camp I was at ended last Saturday, and after three days of very stressful phone tag where I thought I had gotten ditched (I like my boss but she is the single worse person at communication I’ve ever met), I’ve moved over to a new camp this company is running. This new camp is great, mostly because in her words, “all these kids’ parents are really rich.” And that means I’ve...
4 tags
To read before working again in China
I think I’ve nailed down why exactly this camp is so frustratingly tiring – it’s because I’ve lost all spontaneity. Living at the end of the bus line means that you need to end the night and get back on the subway by 8 or 9 at the latest, or risk not getting back at all. And total travel time into the city and back is 3 hours, minimum. When I’m teaching till late afternoon, this means...
4 tags
4 tags
Music
Some of my kids wanted to hear Western music today, so I obliged and played them some songs after class.
Songs they didn’t like:
MGMT – Kids
A Lost People – Big Booty Bitches
Snoop Dogg – Gin and Juice
Bassnectar – Bass Head
Justice – Civilization
Wu Tang Clan – Shame on a Nigga
Songs they liked:
Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe
Maroon 5 – Payphone
Avicii – Levels
Lady Gaga – Telephone
...
4 tags
So my elementary school teachers didn't have the...
I got into the city this afternoon – I need a wifi connection pretty desperately to upload some things I’ve been working on so I’ve sought out a Starbucks, the only reliable source of internet out here. And now you get 4 blog posts at once!
First, I want to showcase some of the delicious street food.
Second, situation at the language camp is still waffling. I’ve moved into a different dorm with a...
3 tags
In which Air China gets me stranded
Tuesday was my day off, and I spent most of it down at Air China offices being thrown around between the help desk, website, and call center. During the process, one of the people at the Air China desk had me fill out a form online that he said would quote me how much of a refund I could get. I finally managed to get them to give me a number for how much more an early flight back would be. And...
July 2012
4 posts
4 tags
Fly, you fools
I am trying my hardest right now to get an early flight back to the US. There’s a couple things that contribute to this decision and they all add up.
I have responsibilities back on campus both in the fraternity and in the Formula SAE team, and there’s about 50 things that need to get done before starts. I’m the guy in charge of housing this year, in a situation where we have a brand new house....
3 tags
The Turning Point
Internet update: Can now get emails, still can’t upload stuff to the internet. I’m in Beijing for the night so I found some wifi to hop off of to upload this.
Perspective: July 24 (Tuesday)
I’m touching base once more – these past few days have been the turning point in my trip here. Classes finished up on Friday with our final, which went well (this summer has been a nice extra gpa...
3 tags
Summer Camp
So it’s the end of day two of the summer camp, and I think I have a pretty good idea of how everything is set up.
I am teaching a class of about 12 kids of all ages and language abilities, from across China. It’s actually pretty troublesome, because it’s pretty clear that the sorting into different ability levels that their website advertises, never happened. But between myself and the help of...
2 tags
Quick Update
Hey guys, don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a little while - I’ve switched schools to one I’ll be teaching at and this new one has no wifi/wired conection so I’m having a really tough time connecting to the internet. Email and skype aren’t working, though ironically enough I can get on facebook and tumblr. I’ll let you know if I find a way to get...
June 2012
4 posts
12 tags
Seeing the Sights of China
Like I said, we’ve been spending a lot of time going around and sightseeing around Beijing. So I’ll go through and tell you about them! (Warning: lots of pictures)
First off, Great Wall
I will go and say that 90% of my conceptions about the Great Wall come from the first few minutes of Mulan. I am happy to say that in terms of what everything looks like and the sheer impressive scale of the whole...
4 tags
I suppose I'm here to be learning stuff too
More updates to come, I swear. I’ve got a trip coming up this week to see my good friends Joomes and AK over in South Korea, and I’m planning on using that plane ride to pound out a few entries to catch up on everything I’ve done. Such as a trip down to Shanghai! And more sightseeing! (Great Wall, anyone?) For now though, I think I’ll write about learning Chinese and that whole process. It is,...
Hey I can breathe today!
The view from the dorm today at noon:
And two days ago at the same time:
Funny story, the US Embassy installed an air quality monitor on its roof a couple years ago in preparation for the Olympics, and has been tweeting the data ever since. In the top photo the air pollution is 5.0 ppm, which is good. The bottom photo? 246.0 ppm. It’s estimated that lowering Beijing’s air...
10 tags
Quirky quirky China
A quick apology for not posting in a while. Ever since classes started up, I’m exhausted by the end of the day. It’s not so much the volume of work we have as just the mental drain of keeping up and processing a new language 24/7. So I’m definitely not going to be able to keep up a daily posting schedule, but I can shoot for every 2-3 days. Right now I have a backlog of posts I’m in the middle of...
May 2012
5 posts
Exploring the Forbidden City
For some reason, I had always thought the Forbidden City was, well, still forbidden. So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that we were going to be walking through, and it wasn’t until we got there that I realized no, we weren’t getting some extra special USC treatment. Oh well, still cool. But in the meantime, we were on a field trip through the streets of Beijing in our...
Settling in
So it’s probably a good thing I’ve lived in cities before. We were taking the bus back from the subway, and I got off at our stop. But when I turned around, the rest of the group was standing there, still in the bus, with looks of sheer horror on their face. And then the bus started to roll away. Oops! Luckily I was only a stop off, so I walked up the few blocks and met up with everyone, who were...
6 tags
First day in China
After over a full day in the air and multiple super-special TSA patdowns, we finally landed in Beijing. I had met up with five other members of the USC group at the gate in Los Angeles, and we were huddling together like sheep, navigating our way through customs until we found our bus waiting for us outside. We had made it, and there in the sky was a sign greeting our welcome – a solar eclipse!...
3 tags
Bags are packed and I’m raring to go
I am sitting in the airport at Atlanta, jacked up on caffeine and blasting electrohouse because hey – who needs a consistent sleep schedule anyway? It’s the perfect environment to start writing a blog to document my three month stay in Beijing this summer of 2012. Ah! If you didn’t know I was going to China, then I guess that just spoiled the surprise. But yes, for a variety of reasons including...
