First Days in a Nutshell

FIRST POST!! YAYA :) Ok guys, lets get started! I'm glad to finally get this blog up and running-- it has been difficult trying to tunnel under the Great Firewall of China, but I have been successful so let the travel blogging begin! Here are the last couple emails I sent out to get everybody updated. From now on I will be posting periodically whenever something awesome happens or just when I have time to write down my thoughts. Madison August 24, 2012 Hey so I don't know if I have the right email address for everyone, but I hope this works :) I MADE IT! It has been quite an eventful day but in a nutshell here is what happened... 1. People who work at ticketing should be able to read (and COMPREHEND) visas. The woman who gave me my boarding pass this morning for my flight to LAX said my visa would expire while I was in China and asked if I had a second. Turns out my visa was fine, but I almost had a panic attack before even going through security. 2. I was stopped going through security because something in my purse (probably my giant metal key from the Magic Kingdom) looked like a knife in the baggage x-rays, go figure. My purse was torn apart and sent back through the x-ray machine for a second time, but at the least the security guard was very sweet. 3. Upon arriving in LAX at 10:00 am I promptly began to freak out because my flight from LA to Beijing started boarding at 11:00. When I was still on the plane at 10:30 the fear really set in. I sprinted off the plane and through baggage collection down to a bus stop where I waited ten minutes for a bus to take me to the international terminal. I picked up my Air China boarding pass and ran toward security, where I was sent through the first class line since I was late for my collecting flight. After arriving at my gate (sweating and distressed) I looked down at my boarding pass to see that the plane was scheduled to depart at 1:20 and not 11:20 as I had originally believed. Turns out the papers Mom gave me with my flight information listed everything in military time and I'm incapable of subtracting 12 from 13:20... This happened earlier too when I saw 17:00 and thought I would be arriving at midnight in Beijing. Apparently 17-12=5...who knew? 4. Both plane rides went smoothly, but I started feeling stressed when I had five hours until landing in China. I tried to watch a depressing movie about whales to distract me, but it didn't really work. Good news is all of my luggage arrived safe and sound, but the bad news was there were no IES representatives at the airport to meet me when I arrived. I found a couple more white girls wandering around aimlessly and we quickly formed a protective herd. Using a pay phone we discovered that the IES people were trapped in traffic, but they eventually made it to the airport with a gloriously air-conditioned bus that put me right to sleep. 5. The dorms are basic. VERY basic. I guess I expected that, but I didn't expect the whole IES building to have the appearance of a hostel from a cheesy horror movie. It will take an adjustment, but I think everything will be just fine. I'm so jet-lagged right now I don't even know how I feel about all this. This morning I was super excited, then on the plane I experienced the calm before the storm. When I landed I just felt dead tired. I've met more people today than names I can remember, but everybody seems generally cool. I'm a little worried, but that is normal for me. So glad to have Jayson and Caroline here, but I've also made new friends already and that is good. I'll update people as often as I can :) Lots of Love! Madi August 27, 12 Ok, this goes out to all those people who have been worrying about me. Yes, when I skyped yall I was upset and very homesick. I tend to do that. A lot. I am naturally more stressed than the average person on a daily basis, and being in this situation doesn't help that. I'm worried about my classes and if everything is going to work out in my favor, and adjusting to Beijing life will take time. HOWEVER, I want everyone to know that I feel much better now. We had a session tonight as part of orientation that was called The Scoop. We were served free ice cream and introduced to past IES students who have done the language intensive program. The difference between this session and all the others was that all the RAs and teachers were dismissed to give students the chance to ask any questions they wanted and receive honest answers that might not be exactly by the book according to IES. Well I had my doubts and the first couple questions were coerced out of students and pretty much involved cliches like "what was your biggest regret?" Well then we got into the nitty gritty concerning the language pledge and the work load for classes. The students didn't BS us, they said it was a lot and time management would be essential...BUT they said the language pledge was flexible and easy to escape from if needed. It only applies on campus and we typically eat lunch off campus so there is at least one break mid-day. Also, questions concerning learning Chinese or bettering your Chinese can be asked in English, and if you can't convey your idea in Chinese or you are really struggling professors will allow you to speak English. And apparently the library is rarely visited by RAs so it can be an English "friendly" zone (unofficially). So basically there are safety valves that I didn't know about and thats really comforting. Also the students just talked about how to get around rules and not to worry about learning all of the 50 characters per day because bad grades on the daily dictation quizes don't count for much. (level 420 students learn 120 characters a day...thank god I'm not in that class). So I will work my hardest, I'm not exactly a slacker, but knowing that its okay to cheat every once in a while and knowing that everybody will be cheating together (think of it as group bonding) actually gives me comfort even though cheating is not something I will ever condone. Anyways, tonight I got free ice cream which makes it a success. Other highlights of the day: visiting the Summer Palace and getting lost for FOUR hours, and thoroughly enjoying spicy lamb on a stick :) YAY. Lots of Love Madi August 28, 2012 Well I got out of the dorm for the first time yesterday and made it to the Summer Palace for a scavenger hunt. My partner, Sofia, and I got very lost on the subway and then when we made it to the Summer Palace we wandered in circles for at least an hour and a half! It was hot and exhausting, but we made it to our checkpoint and took a picture with the marble boat to bring back as proof. Perhaps the highlight of yesterday evening was the chuar (sp?). It is basically cooked meat on a stick, and I opted for spicy lamb after they ran out of chicken. Normally I would never voluntarily eat lamb (I seem to remember a bad experience with it, but that might just be my imagination), however this was one of the most delicious things I have EVER eaten. There is a little chuar stand about fifty feet from the IES building, so I hear students often make late-night chuar runs when the studying gets to them. This morning I experimented with more street food, which proved to be the best decision of my life! I had what amounts to a chinese taco. It is called a jian bing. It is a small pancake of fried bread with egg fried in the center. When they make the pancake they pour the bread mix with the egg together and somehow the egg ends up fried within a sleeping bag of bready goodness and the whole thing looks like it was made by Betty Crocker. THEN to make things better you add some mystery brown saucy, mystery veggies, lettuce, and suspicious looking chicken and VOILA!! Heaven in a plastic bag-to-go :) Yummy :) Madi