Wednesday, July 11, 2012

I have finally found a reasonably priced place whose food is pretty good. The guy who runs it is very loud, but in a good, understandable way. No extra words, "vegetables, don't put meat." 

Everyone seems beat today, maybe it's because it was so hot yesterday when our language partners took us out into Beijing. We went to see the Olympic Stadium yesterday. The Bird's Nest was pretty nice. I liked the courtyard in front. It has a really cool view of all the freaky new buildings that have been built recently in Beijing. The IBM building is weird. I dont know why they built it that way. 

Yesterday was really hot and we walked a lot. Hopefully, since it's supposed to rain a lot, it will just get better. 

Speaking class lasts for an hour and is just that, an hour of speaking. We are having culture class today. We are carving traditional Chinese seals. It should be good. 

On Monday, we painted, which was great because now I know how to draw pandas. Expect to see them on everything!

Tomorrow, I am going to go scout out the zoo. Everyone seems to want to go see the pandas with me, so there are going to be a lot of crazed MoHos at the zoo on Sunday.

Oh, and this weekend we are going to the Great Wall! Yay!

Ve

Monday, July 9, 2012

Hi! I am having a break and there is internet, so here's a quick update. I went to the National Museum of China yesterday, and I went with everyone to the 798 Art District on Saturday. The art district was kind of disturbing. Weird statues... More later!

Ve

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Two days ago we had our first culture class, mask making. Somehow they thought that an hour would be enough. Three hours later the hoard of MoHo perfectionists finished our masks. They were all very beautiful, but the professors weren’t so happy.

Afterwards, we all went out to what is probably the only pizza buffet in China to celebrate a birthday. None of the regular restaurant goers knew what to think about us loudly singing Happy Birthday. It was pretty good though, my body needed some wheat, I think. 

Yesterday, our language partners took us out into the city. We wanted to go to an old street with only tea shops, but our professor said it was too far. So we went in good Beijing fashion to the mall. Most people went to the flea market though. Maybe next week, I’ll try my hand at bargaining there. Who wants to bet that I fail dismally?
Yesterday, at lunch, I accidentally bought just about the most expensive dish in the cafeteria, spicy hot pot. But looking back it was only about $3.50. A word of caution though, just because it looks like tofu, that doesn’t mean it is tofu. 


We started the new textbook today. My brain is going to explode, but in 20 minutes I am off to calligraphy class!  I should probably get a move on.

Bye! Ve

Sunday, July 1, 2012

So this weekend has been very busy. Friday, I learned how the subway worked after acquiring a map of Beijing. I took it to an enormous temple in the center of Beijing, Yonghegong Temple. There was a lot of incense, I took photos, unfortunately I can’t send them.

Saturday, I took the subway to a museum labeled on my map. It was free for students! Only two exhibits were open though, out of seven. The first floor was calligraphy, and the second was a huge exhibit of handmade traditional Chinese toys from the 80s. Lots of two headed tigers :-)

Taking the subway back was just fine, but I exited on the wrong side and ended up physically blocked from the street that I needed in order to walk back to my dorm. I could see it, but I couldn’t get there. I ended up taking a taxi out of frustration. Taxis are very cheap here, so it didn’t matter very much, but I’m still confused about why they didn't build a connection across the bridge.

Saturday night we went as a group to the Beijing Opera. It was a lot funnier than I expected. I will explain more about it another time. On the tables (we had front row table seats, very classy) were tons of Chinese snacks, which were all great. There was also a martial art tea server who did a crazy trick with the tea pot while he poured our tea  :-)

So now it is Sunday and I need to do all of my homework.

~Ve

Yay! Apparently the internet works today, which is good :-) I'm in the library again. I need to make corrections to my essay. We have two mid-terms tomorrow,  the best.... But, yesterday I went on an adventure to the mall down the street. It's a huge building and I walked all around. Very confusing, like a building full of Forever Twenty One clothes, except they are all designer. On the top floor, I found some very bored-looking manicurists, so I got my nails painted purple. It was great. They thought I was funny though. After that, I tried to do homework, but only got through 2 hours, so his morning I had to wake up at 4 to finish. This is going to be a long couple of months. Off to study more!

June 25th

Awesome, I finally managed to post something. I have been desperately searching for internet. There is a very nice (but always packed) cafe on the main floor of my ginourmous dorm which has wifi, but I couldn't get it to work.  I have been to a bunch of other places as well, but I finally had to find the library and gain access to a student's login to access this very shaky service.

Anyway, after my grocery store adventure we had orientation where I had my first taste of authentic Chinese food, some kind of eggy birthday cake with loads of strange fruit on top. Food here is interesting, to say the least. Nothing tastes the way you expect. Hot things are cold, sweet things turn out bitter, and things that look solid enough are not chopstick friendly. So far, I like hot cucumber salad and pijiu. Though tomorrow I'm having black beans, because who would have thought that the store would have enormous fill-your-own-bags of cheap cheap black beans.

Today was the first day of classes. I think that class will be fine, the same as at MHC but faster. The best part of it though is that our language partners. Today they took us around campus (enormous) to find things such as the bank, post office, convenience store, and internet. Most of my clsssmate's bought a cable to connect to an internet service in their rooms, so far not too great for them either.
We all have been eating at the cafeteria, mostly, which is arranged by price; cheap stuff on the first floor and then fancy Japanese, Korean, etc. food on the top floor. Yesterday I got some tofu to go with my cauliflower and rice. Not happening again. At the cafeteria there are millions of options. You point at stuff and they load it onto your plate. It's great. All the noodles seem to have meat though :-(
Beijing is 12 hours different from EST, so when its 8pm here, its 8 am in Maine. Right now I'm in the library, on what looks like an abandoned floor.... actually most of them look abandoned... but no ones kicked me out so far :-) I did get a good scare when a cat wandered around the corner :-) CATS CAN ROAM THE LIBRARY!

I am going to go now before its to dark to find my way back, zaijian!!!!!

2nd day in china-June 24th

Ni hao, ma! Sorry that it has taken me so long to post anything, it's nearly impossible to find internet here. Phones don't seem to work normally either, which makes any form of contact difficult.
So, the plane trip was exceptionally uneventful. Los Angeles was  gross though and the people decidedly unfriendly, but it was over in a mere 30 hours. When we arrived in Beijing we took some teeny train to get our luggage, and got picked up by a BLCU graduate student and very disgrunteled cab driver.

Then we got to the dorm, driving through crazy amounts of bikes and pedestrians, we met our professor, and were seen to our rooms. Zero happened in the day and a half that I spent in my room besides a lot of Chinese game shows and reality tv :-)

That morning, after being up all night, I went on a quest to find a grocery store. Several miles and mistaken attempts later, I found a gaggle of Chinese women with shopping bags after wandering aimlessly through some building for a while.

Happiness Mart, as it is called, had all the worldly possessions I could have asked for at roughly 1/5 the American price. Besides the shampoo and dinner plate I purchased, there were onions at 3 for 50c, a whole head of cabbage for the same price, and much more! So great! The one thing that really has surprised me is the distinct lack of tea sold. You can buy Lipgon or Lipton. Take you pick.

Posting  now, trusting the internet connection...

Ni hao

Off to China today! I am actually finished packing ahead of time for once... Weird. First on the bus to Boston, then the plane this evening to Los Angeles, 4 hour wait in the middle of the night, then the plane to Beijing! I get to Beijing 2 days from now early in the morning! Yay!

I don't think I will have direct access to Blogspot in China, let alone facebook. But hopefully I can post some pictures some times!!!

Zaijian :D

2 days

Off to China this Thursday! I have my first tablet to bring with me, very exciting :-) The packing has begun.

Hello world! Been a long time since I have posted on here, 4 years in fact. Last time I was abroad Obama had just come into office, the banking crisis was just beginning, and we were still in the 00's. The caption of this blog is in for some changes, Budapest is in my past and Beijing is in my future. I will embark on my next abroad experience on the 21st of this month, traveling 2 days with a friend until my arrival in China's capital. There I will spend 2 months learning Mandarin and exploring the blossoming nation of China. This country is on the precipice of global supremacy. China is destined to climb the global market and arrive at the top as a world superpower. It is already of huge importance, but for anyone wishing to learn a useful language, German and French are dying and Chinese is growing. I am recreating this blog to encourage others to become interested in the Chinese market and Chinese language. China has much to offer economically and culturally and any with an interest in the growing economic importance of the Asian continent may find my stay in Beijing of interest.

Yes, it's officially over. Thats seriously hard for me to wrap my head around. Wow.

But its not really the end, there are still AFS meetings, camps, future studies abroad, and facebook to keep me connected to it all.

The return trip went by like a haze, one moment I was sitting on the never-ending flight from Budapest to Zurich, and then I had a seat on Swiss Air to JFK NY. Possibly the worst part was the wait in JFK airport. 6+ hours because my flight was delayed a bit, and the knowlege that most of the other AFSers around the world were already home and I would probably never see them again.

Someday though. Going on an exchange is an experience that cant ever be duplicated. Nothing can compare to how you feel the first month or the last. It might feel like a dream for the most part, but it will forever remain one of the most impotant years of my life.

Vera BP 08/09

Sziasztok,

Today has been a pretty quiet kind of day. I'm attempting to finish a book before I leave. I went out to walk around a bit, last real day in Budapest and all that. We are heading off to Szirák tomorrow afternoon, so tonight might well be the last night I spend here. That's depressing, but I will come back. I don't really doubt that somehow.

Tonight I am going to a Bangladeshi restaurant with some people. Tomorrow more of the same maybe. The Rotary exchangers are all gone now. Time has really flown.

No more news. I'm really excited!

Ve

Sziasztok!

So the thermal baths were awesome! There were lots of different kinds of pools, hot cold, warm, mineral, and more things I don't even know! In one was this circular wall that contained a whirl pool, slightly dangerous and full of human missiles, but FUN! Then there was one entirely for swimming, one with fountains, and one set at 10 degrees Celsius, or cold! We went into the sauna for a while (burned our feet sufficiently) then plunged into the freezing pool. There was a French girl looking at the pool and the people in it like they were out of their minds. You numb right up afterwards though. Next to the saunas were salt caves, you are supposed to sit in them for a long time, but we just had a look.

Szécsényi, the bath we went to, is supposed to be one of the best in Budapest, it was really great. Maybe some day I will go to a Turkish bath too or maybe not. They're a bit more nude in those I'm told.

Today, I walked around Budapest for a while, but it was really hot so I came back.32 degrees! HOT! I'm glad that I will miss the real temperatures in Budapest this summer, I don't know if I would survive.

The last preparations for my trip back home are still underway, I have a feeling it's going to be a mad rush right up until the very last second. Hope everything works out, see everyone back in the USA soon!

Ve

Sziasztok!

So, I have been back from Romania for a while now. It was a really good trip. I should go back someday. We didn't get to see Bucharest.

The final countdown is going now, only five days left. Everything is in a kerfuffle though, I can't figure out what airline I'm going on or how much stuff I am allowed to bring with me. Maybe I will try to ship some of my books. I have been living with Charlotte since I got back. My other host family had to go off for the summer. We spent some time up in Szirák and we went to Szentendre, lots of museums.

Today I will be going to a thermal bath, finally. I can't believe it's taken me all year to get around to it. Yesterday, we toured around the old Jewish district. OK, five days and I will be on a plane! Szia,

Ve

Romania Photos

Photos taken by my friend Erin when we were traveling in Romania.

Sziasztok!

Guess where I am? ROMANIA! That's right, I have been staying in Transylvania for a couple of days now and it is awesome! I came with a couple of friends and a senior tour group. I took a train down to Bekescsaba and then on the 15th we loaded onto a short bus and were off. Getting through customs wasn't difficult, only long. They didn't even look at all of the Hungarians passports, but they took ours off to their secret little building and made us sit there for ever. Don't know what all of the fuss was about. Photos to follow.

Sováll!


The last orientation passed, wow. That's kind of frightening really. I won't ever see most of those people again. Wow.

I missed half of it too because I stayed in Budapest to take my SAT on Saturday morning. It sikerült anyways. At least its over. I hadn't been in a room with that many Americans all year. I didn't get to talk to any of them though, because afterwards I had to book it to Keleti to get my train to Jászberény on time. I was early, but all the people that I asked for help gave me bad info. Hum. Oh well, when I finally got to the orientation they were in the middle of playing some kind of game. Here's the run down of it.

There is a net set up like a tennis net, but with string, everyone stands on one side of it and you have to figure out how to get everyone to the other side (through the net) without them touching the string. Basically, this means everyone has to be picked up and shoved through. It was fun though, pretty hysterical. We have come a long way from the first orientation. Somehow I doubt that it would have worked then. There were a lot more games too, for some reason they all seemed to involve picking each other up... IDK why?

Saturday evening AFS had a surprise in store for us. At about eight, the volunteers led us to some random field and had us stand in a circle. We weren't allowed to talk or stand next to someone from our same country. After a really long time, one volunteer at a time would choose someone randomly and lead them off somewhere. When I was finally picked, I got lead all over the neighborhood. Trust me, the reason is still kind of beyond me. He took me to a playground, a statue, to look at trees, around the block, into someones driveway, etc. I was so confused. Finally, we arrived a this random building with more volunteers in it. They asked me (all stern and serious like) "Was it you that did it?" By that time I was cunfundled so I said, yeah, of course it was. Then they looked at my bracelets... Huh? OK, after giving some random volunteer a hug, they lead me into this dark room with all of the other AFSers who had gone before me in it. They gave me a tea light. After a couple of hours, once everyone had finally arrived, they did an "oh so CBHS" what I am grateful for ceremony. I guess that was the point.

So, we came back to Budapest yesterday afternoon. The train was so sticky, HOT. Rain. Hot. Rain, pretty repulsive. Today I have to pack, or at least start, because after Romania I am going to my friends house for the last two weeks. Wow, this is going by too fast. I have to go and have lunch before my Fabien óra starts, OK,

Bye,
Ve

Hellosztok!

So, things are all over the place here right now. No one really seems to know whats going on, including me, so many things to prepare for.

Yesterday, after school, I went to see Angels and Demons with my friend from Quebec. It wasn't half bad really. I will have to read the book in a couple of years when I've forgotten who won! Afterwards we met a guy from New Zealand.

Tuesday I went walking around Budapest with the girl from Belgium before the monthly meeting with AFS. She needed a new back pack, but the most we could come up with wasn't right. You wouldn't believe how many purses are for sale in Budapest though, they re everywhere! So after was the meeting. In the same tiny, hot cafe as always.

This weekend will be the orientation, unfortunately I have to take the SAT on Saturday, but I still have to make it to the orientation somehow, any suggestions? OK, I should get going, so much to do. Sziasztok,

Veronica