Beijing Language & Culture University (BLCU – 北京语言大学)…

大家晚上好！现在我又累又捆，但是我会写一下.

Finally got some time to write another post. Turns out I was correct in assuming that I would have no time after school started. This school is SOO different than the previous institution I was at. I have gone from stressing speaking/listening skills to stressing reading/writing. This is too bad since I am okay with being illiterate in Chinese and mainly wish to learn the spoken language. But, I figured I might as well take advantage of this while I’m here (plus the Asian in me wouldn’t let me NOT try – sorry about the double negative…). Therefore, I have been buckled down and studying like a maniac. Luckily, I have slowly toned down the amount so as to not go insane. After my placement test I got placed into the near bottom class. This was just too easy, so I spoke with the teacher in Chinese to convince her I deserved to be in a higher level…thank goodness. I was pleased to find out that class was from 8AM – 12PM (so I would be able to vchat with Jenn). On the other hand, 8AM is a bit early. A silver lining is that the cafeteria at BLCU is also insanely cheap (fresh made stir-fry for $1USD or a bowl of spicy beef noodles the size of Frisbee for less than $0.50).

The school provided a free trip to the Great Wall. Although I had already been, the frugal side of me could not pass up on a free trip. So I boarded the bus at 8AM with all my new friends, most from Villanova. It was interesting as I went from being the youngest of my friends to one of the oldest (except one or two). We had a fun bus ride there getting to know each other, telling some riddles, and finding out who were not morning people. Upon arriving at the Great Wall (Mutianyu – different part than I went to last time), we saw the bus thermometer say 41C (~106F). This was gonna be one hot hike. Luckily, I wore shorts and a t-shirt this time around. After lathering on some sun screen, buying some food and water, and regrouping we began our ascent to get to the Wall. Little did we know we had to climb what I counted to be somewhere around 50 flights of stairs! After most people’s quads and calves felt like they had been turned to Jello we were rewarded with a fantastic view of the Wall. I was very happy I decided to come as this part of the Wall was much cooler and the weather permitted better photographs. We explored around the Great Wall, took some cheesy photos here, some epic photos there, and made our way to the top; where the gondola to go down was. After finding out it cost 85 RMB (~$13USD) to go down, we all looked at each other and said, “If we hurry we can still make the bus by walking.” So our cheap-minded group hustled back down to make the bus back with a whopping 3 minutes to spare. One of the funnier photos/series of photos that was taken was of two ‘bananas’ eating bananas on the Great Wall. In China, they call a Chinese person that is yellow on the outside and ‘white’ on the inside a ‘banana’ (what we call ‘Twinkies’ in the States). For our dehydrated bus ride back, most (all) people passed out and woke up 2 hours later upon arrival at the school. We all grabbed some lunch together then went home. After a good shower and lots of water we went out to the bars to enjoy a relaxing night.

Nice view

By popular demand: Bananas eating bananas on the Great Wall...

The Wall

This week has gone by fairly quickly until yesterday. I had promised my German friend that I would go watch the semi-final game against Spain with him. However, I had forgotten that the rest of the games were being aired at 2:30AM here in China. But I could not back out on him. So after class, I studied, took a power nap, ate some food, and heading out to meet everyone at 11PM. We went to our new favorite spot, PBD Bar and Pizzeria. They just opened and served free beer on tap all night long, plus the owner loved us and gave us other free stuff. To our dismay, the bar was filled with band-wagon Spain fans. After a long two hours of watching Germany really miss Mueller and have no attack whatsoever, my German mate spun into a cycle of anger/depression. We left the bar around 5AM. One of my friends let me crash at their room, as their roommate just moved out (yay friends!). I crawled into bed, exhausted from the night and then awoke 45 minutes later to my soothing alarm clock. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good. So I did my usual morning ritual of breakfast and studying simultaneously before class. My body reacted as usual, getting hyped up on adrenaline. I was extremely attentive and jived up for the first two hours of class. Then it hit me and I slowly hit a wall. Though I successfully made it through class and beyond. This brings us to me passing out at home for about an hour, waking up, eating, and now writing this post.

Tomorrow** I hop on a bus to go to Inner Mongolia (largest province in China). Should be lots of fun! Next week is my last week of class, then my final exam. In other words, next weekend will be spent cram studying (just like finals at Michigan!). After our ‘graduation’ party, I will have about 10 days off to explore, relax, try and use Chinese. More importantly, I will get to celebrate the big 2-1. I will try and post about Inner Mongolia as soon as more time frees up (after examinations) and hope to read more about everyone else’s endeavors.

再见！(even though everyone just says ‘byebye’ here)

- Kevin

**This happened this past weekend. Sorry for the late posting.