The Next Few Days were a Blur

The next few days after I had arrived seem to blur together and since im really bad about keeping a journal, I have a very limited idea on which day I did each activity.  The next morning our group met in the lobby to get ready for registration and a quick trip around the neighborhood (so we knew where the grocery store was).  We got all the information that we needed for it and headed down.  I’ll be honest, for a school that seems pretty organized; this was not organized at all.  It was pretty straight forward:  go from desk 1-8 in order.  However, when we got there it was just taking so long that the woman in charge of our group while we are here, just took us out of line and started us in a random pattern.  We got to one desk and they told us that we needed to get our photos taken for our student ID’s.  However while waiting in line, she got impatient and said “here, I’ll finish this up but you must promise me to wait in line for the photo”.  At this point we were all just kind of fed up with all the disorganization of it all to complain that we just did what we were told. 

That night we decided to go to the Wudaokou.  We set off as a group to the subway, in the hopes that we would be able to catch a taxi there eventually.  We had found one and I quickly hopped in with Betsy, Drew, and Dallin.  When we arrived at Xizhimen station, where the rest of our group with end up to transfer to the Wudaokou station, we waited quite a while for them to arrive.  Eventually we left hoping to meet them in Wudaokou.  There were plenty of times where we have been split up and randomly made it back together.  This was one of those times.  We had pretty much given up on finding them when we got to Wudaokou, so we decided that we would walk around by ourselves.  That’s we heard a voice above the city noise yelling our names.  It was Brother Galer trying to get our attention.  In such a big part of the city it was kind of surprising that we met up with them again.  However if theres one thing I have learned, waiguoren (foreigners) stick out like a sore thumb.  Now every time we see a white person, we usually comment on the waiguoren, as if we have been living here for such a long time that we consider ourselves Chinese.  Essentially at Wudaokou we just walked around.  One thing to note was that we found a baozi place, which isn’t that big of a deal now but it was back then.  Baozi are steamed buns with some sort of filling, meat or vegetable, that can come in a variety of sizes.  The reason why this was so exciting to me was because my Chinese name is Bao, the same character as this delicious xiaochi, snack, and I came to hear about it on my mission when the elders asked if I had ever eaten one.  These Baozi were on the bigger side and although they were not the bbq pork flavor that I had in Australia while I was on my mission, it was still just as good. After this we walked around some more, got a drink at this place called City Drink, and being tired we made our back to the School. I found out later that Wudaokou is pretty much the party part of Beijing.  This is where all the students go when they want to go to bars and out for clubs and what not.

The following morning we had our placement exam.  This exam was the hardest exam that I took.  I didn’t understand a lot of it, but basically it was asking for the antonyms of certain words which I couldn’t read half of them , or if I could, I didn’t know the antonym or didn’t know how to write it.  Most of the test was left blank or had pinyin on it.  The last part was really pathetic though because we had to write a composition that was about 100 characters on the topic of xuexi hanyu, learning Chinese.  At the time I couldn’t read the hanyu part so I left it blank. I was debating on writing I don’t know what these characters are on the test but decided to leave it blank. Had I written that the people grading the test would have gotten quite the laugh at that.  Next was the oral test.  We had to read a paragraph which wasn’t too bad, and then talk to the examiner about it.  I thought I had done pretty well for that section, with some obvious slip ups.  The major one was when I had finished he said to me in Chinese that I could leave, and I just stared at him.  I had absolutely no idea what he had just said.  Eventually after saying it a few times he said in English “you can go” and I was off on my way.  If that wasn’t a failure I don’t know what is. Eventually I found out I was in the lowest class offered without being in the elementary level, which was kind of a slap in the face (later on I would transfer up to the next level because the class was too easy).

After the exams we went to Tian’anmen Square.  It is only a 30minute subway ride to it from our school.  When you come up out of the Tian’anmen West Station, the Forbidden City is on your Left.  Right across the street is Tian’anmen Square, and it is a lot bigger than I thought it was.  This is where such events as the 1989 massacre (Student protest mowed down by military) and the tank man (man stood in front of tanks) took place.  This place had street lights every so often in the middle of the square and on each post were cameras keeping track of what happened on the square.  Anything funny going on a police van would come and take the people away.  One man was handing out flyers on the square and was taken away in a vehicle.  Protests here are pretty much useless.  First off you must notify the government and petition to have a protest at least 5 days in advance, which the government usually didn’t allow it, and if you did do it chances are you would get picked up. 

After learning more about the square we made our way over to the silk market and looked around there for a little while.  The silk market is one of the many bargain shopping places in Beijing, and the bane of my existence here in Beijing.  Im no good at bargaining because im too nice, and have gotten ripped off a ton there.  They’ve got everything you can think of.  You can get custom made, fitted suits that are only about $100-200 depending on if you get a vest and how well you can bargain for.  If you do well with bargaining you can get a lot of things for pretty cheap. Most clothing, food, and movies are very cheap here on the street.  You can get a DVD for about 5-12 kuai ($.80-$1.80) depending on the quality of the movie.  I have purchased entire seasons for only $10, most of which have been good quality. Once we had finished we travelled back to school to get ready for tomorrow in which we would travel to the Great Wall.