Looking Toward the Future on Laundry Day

Today I successfully did my first load of laundry here in Beijing, but as the picture above demonstrates, I use the term "successfully" in a very liberal sense. It wasn't so much the washing of the clothes as it was the drying that gave me trouble. Apparently according to Chinese dryers, medium heat dries your clothes about halfway. But I suppose I can't complain, since according to the dictionary, the adjective "medium" is defined as "the middle between two extremes of some quality". In this situation the two extremes would have to be wet and dry, so I guess the dryer did exactly what I told it to do...

Aside from being completely surrounded by my damp clothes, I'm feeling pretty good right now. As of last Friday, I've finished a quarter of my term at HBA, and as much as I miss home, my friends, and my family, I think I've reached a point where I can confidently say that I'm both proud and glad that I made the decision to spent the summer studying Chinese.

At this point in my life, it's rather difficult to imagine where I'll been in five or ten years. I have yet to decide my major at Yale, and I can't say that I'm much closer to making that decision than I was a year ago, with my career at Yale fully in front of me. But that being said, I strongly believe that the major decisions I'm making (and have made) will have a large impact on my future. When I decided to apply for the Light Fellowship (which provided the funding for my study here in China), I wasn't even completely sure that I'd end up here. I can remember the day that some former Light Fellows came into our Chinese class last year and introduced us to the program. It had to have been within the first two months of school, and at that point my study of the Chinese language had barely begun. I had a hard time feeling certain that I'd stick with the language for the three required semesters, let alone pack my stuff up over the summer and head to China.

But here I am.

I don't really have any idea whether I'll ever master this language, or even if I do, whether I'll end up in a career where I can make use of the skills I'm learning right now. But ever since high school, I've always felt that in times of uncertainty, the best course of action is to keep as many doors open as possible.

In high school, I wrote an essay as part of my application for the Daily Herald's academic team. In essence, I wrote about how high school is like being thrown into a mansion with hundreds of rooms, these doors representing the multitude of academic, athletic, and extra-curricular opportunities. And during high school, you can open the doors to these rooms, peek in, and see what you think, but you can't go in - yet. Then I wrote how college is the time where you get to think about all the rooms you've looked into, and eventually you decide which room you want to live in (this representing the process of deciding on a major). As I stand right now, I'm still out in the hallway, I haven't quite decided which room is mine. But the advantage that I feel I've given myself - as a result of this summer in China and my other academic and extra-curricular decisions- is that I haven't shut any of the doors for good.

I suppose there are two schools of thought on this whole premise. There's my open-door policy, and there are those would say that keeping so many doors open leaves you vulnerable to over-extension and/or indecision. And at times, I can't help but think it might be easier to settle on something and stick with it, leaving all else behind. But as a rising college sophomore who still wants to learn more about economics, psychology, philosophy, international relations, China, and a host of other things, I don't think I'm quite ready. And as a 19-year-old who still loves to draw, paint, sing, play guitar, skateboard, and play video games, I just haven't made up my mind.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that... do you?

In the next three years, I'll experience new classes and make new discoveries that will lead me to that decision, and I don't think there's any call for rushing the process. In the summer before my sophomore year of high school, I didn't know half the things I knew the day I stood before my classmates giving our graduation speech. And I have a hard time believing I won't feel the same way by the time I'm walking through Harkness Gate on my Yale graduation day.

But for now, I've got seven more weeks of learning Chinese to worry about. And for now, there's no point in having anything else but that in the front of my mind.

Existentially yours,

Jamey

The Forbidden City and Week #2

大家好!

Just got back from my latest Saturday trip, and

you know what that means... BLOGGING TIME.

Today we traveled to the Forbidden City, one of

Beijing's most well-known landmarks. For all of you Disney fans out there, this is where the big fight scene in "Mulan" takes place. The Forbidden City was home to the emperors of some of the great Chinese dynasties. To give you an idea of how big the place really is, it literally would take a good ten or fifteen minutes to get from the south entrance to the north gate. Imagine what a hassle it must have been to get the door when people rang...

There are essentially two parts of the Forbidden City, the first being the squares and palaces in the front, and the second being the back garden. The buildings in the City are essentially what comes to mind when you think about typical ancient Chinese architecture - red buildings accented with gold, sloping roofs, pillars, etc. I feel like I've seen these style in photos hundreds of times, but there is little that can prepare you for witnessing it in real life. It's hard to put into words the magnitude of intricacy and beauty that I witnessed in these structures. Throughout our visit, I tried to imagine what it was like thousands of years ago, without all the tourists milling about, and I could barely fathom the idea that at some point, this was someone's home.

The front palace area was striking due simply to the size, but I found myself even more fascinated by the back garden area. Here, the architecture was complemented by a backdrop of rock formations and trees, the red pavilions even more impressive against natures greens and grays. To put it simply, it would have been a hell of a backyard to hang out in.

But unfortunately this week I did more than explore a Chinese national landmark, I also learned some more Chinese. Hard to believe that I'm already through with two weeks. It's even harder to believe that in two more weeks I'll be on a train headed for the Shaolin Temple!

For those of you who aren't especially familiar with the way this summer program works (which I would imagine is most of you), I spend nine weeks here in China, eight of them in Beijing studying the Chinese language, and one of them elsewhere doing a social study project. This year we had about eight different destinations to choose from for the social study, the most interesting (according to me) being Shaolin, Shanghai, and Inner Mongolia. This past week I decided on Shaolin, where I'll get to meet some monks, see some sights, and not least of all, learn some kung-fu! I'll update you guys on that whole front as the time nears.

Anyway, it's about six in the evening here in Beijing which means it's time for me to shower up and hit club scene like it's 1993 (I don't know what that means). Hope you guys enjoyed this week's edition of Jamey goes someplace cool in China and writes about it.

Stay cron-j'ed,

James

长城 (Great Wall)

Surviving Week One

So it's been about a week since I last posted something here. This is primarily due to the fact that this past week has been perhaps the busiest and longest of my entire life. I've literally been in Beijing for seven days and it feels like I've been here for months. But I have a feeling now that I've got the first week of class, the first week of homework, the first test, etc. out of the way, these next two months will be a lot of fun.

In case the pictures above didn't clue you in, we took a trip to the Great Wall today. This was the first of our weekly HBA sponsored excursions throughout Beijing and the surrounding area. I actually don't have a schedule of any sort so I'm not sure where we'll be headed next Saturday, but I would assume over the next eight weeks we'll hit the major spots such as Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and Beihai Park.

The Great Wall was phenomenal. For those of you who don't already know, this trip to China is the first time that I've travelled out of the States, and furthermore, my travels around the U.S. have not been very extensive (yet). The Great Wall is definitely the most well-known landmark I've ever been to, in China or otherwise. The section of the Wall that we visited is called the Mutianyu Great Wall. It was first built sometime in the mid 6th century and then rebuilt to its present state during the Ming Dynasty, which ruled from 1368 to 1644 (according to Wikipedia). Aside from the hike to and from the Wall, I enjoyed everything about the trip. There's certainly something strange (and cool) about walking on top of a thousand-year-old wall, which once served the purpose of keeping the Mongols and other invaders out of China.

I would post more pictures (since I took about 100) but the internet connection here isn't too great so it takes about three minutes to upload every picture. However, those of you who are friends with me on Facebook can check out the photo album I just posted, and those of you who aren't friends with me on Facebook are S.O.L. Just kidding. I just made the album visible to everyone, so if you Google my name you can get to my Facebook and hopefully check out all the pictures.

I'm slowly getting used to the workload here at HBA so hopefully I'll be able to write more frequently in the coming weeks. Ideally I'll throw something up here on a daily basis so that I don't have to try to fit a week's worth of stuff into one post.

For right now that's all I got. I hope everyone enjoys the pictures (and the blog in general). Let me know if you guys have any suggestions or if there's anything in particular you'd like me to write about - I'd certainly be glad to oblige.

Just remembered one last thing. I took some video footage at the Wall so I'm going to try to get that up in a separate post.

One week down, eight to go,

Jamey

Lag-tastic Voyage

It was only minutes into my first expedition to one of Beijing's supermarkets that I received this grave news. It's going to be a long summer without candy drink.

Seriously though, it is 3:21 in the afternoon and I've spent the entire day exploring the BLCU campus. I managed to get a cell phone, internet access, and a gym membership all for about $130, which isn't bad by any means.

First impressions of Beijing...

1) It's a one-of-a-kind feeling to look up at a "clear sky" and not be able to see the sun... at all.

2) Tomorrow I sign a pledge saying that I won't speak in any other language besides Mandarin until the end of the program. This means one of two things at this point. Either I'll get really good at communicating through hand gestures, or I'll really have to improve my Chinese in a hurry.

3) I can only imagine the things going on in the local peoples' heads as they watched my friends and I pull out our cameras to take pictures in the supermarket.

4) At certain times today I literally felt like a martian.

That's all for now, jet lag has turned me into a zombie, so much so that I can't really tell if I'm tired or not. I have a feeling I'm running on fumes right now and in about three hours I'll just pass out wherever I am.

fresh to def,

Jamey

2:54 AM - Night Before Departure

Even though it sucked to watch the Philly fans boo the Hawks while they celebrated the big win, I can't even imagine how disappointed I would have been if the series had gone to game seven, considering that I'll be almost completely disconnected from the Western world between tomorrow night and Monday (when I get my internet set up in Beijing).

I still can't believe that I'm leaving tomorrow morning, and it probably won't really hit me until I get to the airport. The whole idea of leaving the country is still so surreal that I'm not even really nervous yet. We'll see how that changes over the course of the day tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a wonderful summer back home, and I'll try to post on this blog as often as I can. I'd love to stay in touch with everyone as much as possible.

J-Club for lyfe,

Jamey

Five(ish) Days and Counting

This is a test.

I set up this blog quite a while ago, and now that I'm in my last stateside week, I guess I better figure out how it all works. Supposedly all my posts will be forwarded to Facebook (through the Notes application if it works out right), but we'll see if that's the case in a few short minutes.

Enjoy.