Sunday January 16th, 2011

This morning, I rolled out of bed around 7 AM. I left the dorm at 8 with Shazeda and Joy, and we found some street food for breakfast. I found my favorite Chinese breakfast food: a meat between two pieces of bread (in the strict Chinese translation), or in a looser translation, a “meat smash.” I like the latter better.

We headed over to JingShan Park for the day (please refer to day 2 [January 8^th] for further clarification). The mountain in the park, as I suspected, is man-made. The refuse from which ths mountain is composed comes from the construction of the Forbidden City. Imagine that. We had 2 objectives for going to this park: see the scenery and check out the crazy excerises that Chinese people do in the morning. We accomplished both of these feats.

Then we went over to Tian’An Men Square, to check out the Maoseleum, the square, and the giant portrait of the venerable Chairman Mao. I took several emotional pictures in front of the great Chinese leader, and then we headed back towards the campus. Don’t let the simplicity of the tour lead you astray; it was after 12 when we got back to campus.

We ate lunch at my favorite Muslim cafeteria on campus, and the seven of us who went ate an extremely cheap and good meal. Each paid a mere $1.25 for a full meal.

That afternoon we attended yet another meeting at 2, which lasted for an hour. Teacher Zhang spoke again, and we also had a speaker from the University come. In this meeting, Zhang introduced all of the teachers for the program. There are 24 teachers in all, and but one of them is male. One of the teachers looks exactly like Jack White – the lead guitarist and singer from the White Stripes – and simultaneously excites and disturbs me. The remaining teachers, sadly, did not look like any of my other favorite musicians.

Then, it was nose to the grindstone. We have a good amount of homework to do every night, upon which I won’t elaborate now, for fear of alienating and boring those following my blog.

That about wraps it up for the day, but I’ll be sure to write again soon. Please email me and tell me about the states, and also if you have any questions or comments about living in the People’s Republic of China!

I’ll write soon.

Jamey