January 13th, 2011 (written on the morn of the 14th)

Dear All –

As of today, the program has begun! Yuki set an alarm for the both of us, and we went to register in a building just behind our dorms. That building, called the North Building, is where the ACC offices are located. After that, I went back to the dorms, and played guitar during my free time. Whilst I was playing, some folks from the program stopped by. There are a good many people who play guitar here (I count 3 excluding myself at the moment), and a lot of the people sing or play other musical instruments. I don’t think this is coincidence at all, as Li Ding’s mother Rebecca once told me, “people who are good at languages are good at two things: math and music.” Given that Chinese is a tonal language (expressed through number measurements of tone), it makes sense that we all love music. My room as become the unofficial hangout room, and before we left to go on a campus tour at 10 AM, there were about 15 people in my room, all singing and drinking tea.

Yesterday, I met some more people. Shazeda is from NYC, and I think her roommate Joy is too. We went on the campus tour, and saw some of the noteworthy buildings in the neighborhood: banks, restaurants, etc. While on the trip, I got to meet some of the ACC professors. Our guides were Wang, Shi, and He Laoshi. Shi Laoshi, a male professor from Beijing, teaches the Chinese chess and Go elective classes. I made sure to talk to him! On the tour with me were Vinod, Kaylin, Emily (from Grinnell College – I can’t get over that), and Yuki. The tour lasted for a good to hours, and after that we all ate with the professors in a Muslin cafeteria. I felt like a traitor in enemy territory, but no on else there was Muslin either, so I guess it’ll be ok. The professors were all interested in the places in China that I’d visited. Not surprising. Chinese people love their country.

After eating lunch, we went over to the Chinese Development Bank so that folks could withdraw money from ATMs and exchange currency. While we were there, I was helping Kaylin exchange her dollars to Yuan. Kaylin’s family is full-blooded Chinese, and the bank teller thought that she was a native Chinese person, and kept asking asking her questions. She can’t say too much Chinese, and the guy kept thinking that she wanted to change RMB to US dollars. We finally got it worked out, and it took a minute to get the currency straightened out.

Then, I went back up to the room and called Morgan. She got the first of her surprises last night! I’m so excited, and can’t wait for her to get the rest of them!

After that, Vinod, Emily, Kaylin, Nina, Susanna, Will, and myself went over to QianHai and ice-skated. It was awesome! I don’t have any pictures from the day though; I didn’t want to mess up and break the camera. Since I’d be skating around. We skated for around two hours, and the girls stepped out on the ice and walked around. Will, a guy from San Francisco, at one point while I wasn’t with him, looked at the girls and said: “How does a guy from Alabama know how to ice skate?! And why can he do it so well?” That made my day when they told me he said that. But his appraisal of my skating ability may have been a little off. I definitely fell hard on my knee, and now its swollen. I feel like a dumb.

Then we walked around the Old City for a while and looked for an old Catholic Church. It was closed by the time we found it, and we got to know each other while we walked around. Turns out that Will is an Eagle Scout! That was also cool.

Then we took the subway back to our stop, and ate at a SiChuan restaurant. The food was spicy, but so good. And it was cheap; only 102 Yuan (16 dollars) for the seven of us. I spent about an hour trying to find an ATM that would give me money. Then we went back to the dorm, and by that time, it was about 10 PM. All of the 6^th floor (almost) came over to my room, and we had a party in here to welcome in the program. We played Scrabble, ERS, Richman/poor man, 31, and others played a bluffing game that I don’t understand.

We got to bed around 12, ready to take the placement test at 8 in the morning!

I’ll write soon!

Jamey