Just arrived in Harbin!
> Hey everyone!
I finally got internet set up in my room, so I have the opportunity to write email at my leisure! I've been in China for about a week now; I got here last Wednsday (Tuesday America time) and it's been non-stop since I got here. My first couple of days were in Beijing, and though I didn't see much of it, I'm sure it'd be interesting to go back there. What they say about the pollution is true, though...in some areas, it's so thick it looks as though it might be slightly foggy. It was super hot outside, but the sky was never...actually...blue...kind of disconcerting, actually!
After we'd oriented a little bit, we took a comfy sleeper train north to Harbin, and were bussed to our new home away from home. You know, I learned in my fitness teacher training that you should always say two positives, and then a negative, so here goes: The town of Harbin is fantastic. It has these neat underground markets that go for blocks and blocks, and the downtown area seems to have pretty much everything anyone could need. I also am really thrilled about how cheap everything is here (four of us went out to eat and paid ten bucks for a ton of food). That said, the campus is the pits! lol. Summer is the construction time here, because everything freezes solid come October or so, so the entire place is torn up. The already somewhat tired buildings are now accented by gurgling streams of mud that cascade down the student thoroughfares when the Chinese rain gods get upset, so the end result is somewhat less than picturesque. Our dorm rooms are pretty OK, though, even if our bathrooms are a bit primitive, the rooms themselves are entirely satisfactory and much better than I expected.
My roommate is also great, very patient with my pidgin Chinese. She's from Harbin, and has already invited me at some point in the future to go visit her family, which should be a blast! I think we'll get along fine.
My classes are another story; it's quite rough to be thrust into an all-Chinese academic setting. I have no idea how the grades work, but I sure hope it's on a curve, cuz half of what goes on is over my head. I'm very excited about my one-on-one class though, I was given the chance to choose a topic interesting to me (Chinese foreign relations, in my case) and CET found me a professor here at Harbin Institute of Technology to teach me the subject. He's very nice; also pretty patient as I look up easy words like "reason" and "change" along with harder ones like "nuclear technology" (which, in case anyone wants to know, is he2 ji4 shu4, and the numbers are the tones). I'm really excited about it; today we planned our syllabus and are going to talk about North Korea, Australia, and South America, all as they relate to Chinese and American relations.
I have some serious studying to do, but I'll leave you with a sample of my favorite part of China: its English skills. My new hobby is perusing the English translations of the Chinese labels, and the best so far is a brand of men's underwear called The Foreskin Saga. (no joke!!!) First runner up goes to the coconut flavored Wheat Embryo Biscuits I purchased two days ago.
Thanks for tuning in, more next time!
I finally got internet set up in my room, so I have the opportunity to write email at my leisure! I've been in China for about a week now; I got here last Wednsday (Tuesday America time) and it's been non-stop since I got here. My first couple of days were in Beijing, and though I didn't see much of it, I'm sure it'd be interesting to go back there. What they say about the pollution is true, though...in some areas, it's so thick it looks as though it might be slightly foggy. It was super hot outside, but the sky was never...actually...blue...kind of disconcerting, actually!
After we'd oriented a little bit, we took a comfy sleeper train north to Harbin, and were bussed to our new home away from home. You know, I learned in my fitness teacher training that you should always say two positives, and then a negative, so here goes: The town of Harbin is fantastic. It has these neat underground markets that go for blocks and blocks, and the downtown area seems to have pretty much everything anyone could need. I also am really thrilled about how cheap everything is here (four of us went out to eat and paid ten bucks for a ton of food). That said, the campus is the pits! lol. Summer is the construction time here, because everything freezes solid come October or so, so the entire place is torn up. The already somewhat tired buildings are now accented by gurgling streams of mud that cascade down the student thoroughfares when the Chinese rain gods get upset, so the end result is somewhat less than picturesque. Our dorm rooms are pretty OK, though, even if our bathrooms are a bit primitive, the rooms themselves are entirely satisfactory and much better than I expected.
My roommate is also great, very patient with my pidgin Chinese. She's from Harbin, and has already invited me at some point in the future to go visit her family, which should be a blast! I think we'll get along fine.
My classes are another story; it's quite rough to be thrust into an all-Chinese academic setting. I have no idea how the grades work, but I sure hope it's on a curve, cuz half of what goes on is over my head. I'm very excited about my one-on-one class though, I was given the chance to choose a topic interesting to me (Chinese foreign relations, in my case) and CET found me a professor here at Harbin Institute of Technology to teach me the subject. He's very nice; also pretty patient as I look up easy words like "reason" and "change" along with harder ones like "nuclear technology" (which, in case anyone wants to know, is he2 ji4 shu4, and the numbers are the tones). I'm really excited about it; today we planned our syllabus and are going to talk about North Korea, Australia, and South America, all as they relate to Chinese and American relations.
I have some serious studying to do, but I'll leave you with a sample of my favorite part of China: its English skills. My new hobby is perusing the English translations of the Chinese labels, and the best so far is a brand of men's underwear called The Foreskin Saga. (no joke!!!) First runner up goes to the coconut flavored Wheat Embryo Biscuits I purchased two days ago.
Thanks for tuning in, more next time!
posted by Timbre | 8:04 PM
1 Comments:
hi! i was wondering if you could give me some more information on harbin. i am planning to take advanced language classes there in about a year and i am looking for a place that's clean, cold, safe, moderately cosmopolitan, and not too expensive.
how clean is harbin?
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