OH man, so just got done with the jan term graduation banquet! Was fun! So, officially I can speak English again. I don’t really want to honestly, its too easy, gotta keep improving dat Chinese! This week was just classes and finishing up! Here is a picture of my classmates and I.

And here is my awesome roommate Yang Bo Zi, this guy is legit, and I think next quarter we can room together again! Been a lot of help learning Chinese and we have had some pretty legit adventures.

Also last week I was able to meet up with a family friend for dinner, she took college athletic directors around Asia to see the conditions  of various Nike factories. Anyways, they were all real fun group to be with, and got treated dinner! Still a college student, still getting free meals, yusssss.   It is really comforting to see a familiar face when in a foreign country.

Speaking of foreign country guess who downloaded chines e League of Legends!!!! This kid, soo good, buncho  Chinese kids talking shit to me.. favorite insult so far is …well one sec, direct translation makes it a lil weird,… but.. “you think you are a fierce bull” and then you reply yes.

So Whats the plan? all graduated from janterm!!

Well

Tonight is KTV (karaoke) time then I have the weekend and am going to Thailand to hang out with the Western homies John and Paige!!! Who is excited…? This kid. Who has a plan…..? This . Well I sort of have a plan. It involves Bangkok, a train at some point then finding people in a Chang mai.

So be posting about the trip, maybe during the trip? Probabaly not, hope all is well. Missing you guys! Next blog post inbound probably in a  week/week and a half

Herro !! soo been super busy with classes this week, only have a week and a half left now. So last weekend went to Great Wall, had some good times, climbed up stairs…. Saw the mountains… rode a luge. So we walk up and get to the top and this girl is like "WOOWW look how far away that is."

"Ugh I don’t want to walk up all those steps….."

And see the beautiful  landscape….

"Im just going to complain.." So I look at my homies…. Yo we gonna climb to the top???

OBV(sorry a scrub put his thumb in the picture)

Then we walk down, and this sign is staring at me

IS THAT A CHALLENGE

I look over the edge, grab hold of the closest person and tell them. Don’t worry, imma put you on my back. And we can slide down this mountain.  It was completely unsafe, extremely cold, and a little expensive. #WORTHIT

WEEKEND LIFE

Wait… first, week life. We learned to make dumplings… omg so hard, there is an art to making the perfect looking dumpling, how you roll the dough, how much stuff you put in the dough, how you fold the dough…Sadly, did not get the most outstanding dumpling award....

ATTENTION EVERYONE: like to give a shout out to the blue star wars T-shirt, hopefully it can return home safe after it’s second tour. Godbless it and it’s starwars shirt family back home.

We can see here I’m wearing it on it’s first tour of china

Ok weekend life. One I thought the CS homies would appreciate this.

This “Choice” bear is 2.5% :l Chinese people and beer.. I have yet to find beer over 4% soo you resort to the best, worst thing, this shit right here is 56% alc. About $2-3 a fifth, and tastes like acetone. But with mango juice, its k.

Next up they don’t actually have red solo cups here, so we play with the Dixie equivalent.

Finally hilarious things that happen at a bar. So you know that one song where the guy starts yelling jump! Jump! Jump! Jump up and get down… or something like that, well Chinese people don’t know what jump means so in the club when that song is playing and there is 5 people who can understand English songs…. Only those 5 jump.. trololo. Another thing to note, I buy my roommate a 5kuai(80cent) kamikaze shot which isn’t really that strong, he says to me “that was really good, want to do another?” I of course say yes, he says “2 each?” I of course say yes, he comes back with two tequila shots each, I say “ have you ever had tequila homie?” He of course says no… /facepalm. Alright word, let’s do it anyways.

 Hope all is well.  And yes I was pointing to the base.

So went to the forbidden palace again, and decided I didn't want to spend that much time in the main part so I went exploring! Things I found. A huge ceramic gallery that showed the progression of techniques of how they fired and embellished pieces.

Also went and checked out the Hall of Clocks and Watches, it displays almost 200  clocks and watches from the imperial collection. Many were made by famous English and French clock makers and have Chinese timepieces as well.

 Also went to the treasure gallery walking up to it was the Nine Dragons Screen

I just kind of stared at it and vibed out for awhile, then realized it was 10 degrees and an air pollution of around 380… so went inside to…!

...

...

...

Everyday items that the royal court used such as gold chopsticks

and gold teacups  and gold…… yeah also they were displaying these giant jade sculptures

During the Qing Dynasty theater going was a main source of entertainment so OBV the emperor built his own, I GIVE YOU Pavilion of Pleasant Sounds

This trip ends with a me walking a direction and getting lost and being around 5 miles away from the nearest subway stop, then me telling arguing with this guy because he wanted to give me a ride on his bike and I kept saying no and he kept saying “YO you are like 40 minute walk from anything” (this is all in Chinese, I don’t know how the YO translates but I will figure it out) and then he asked if I was American and I told him no, I don’t know English and walked away. ITS SO EASY just don’t make it obvious you understand them and then say “I don’t speak English” problem solved. Anyways I’m freezing, no idea where I am, find a tea shop place, and ask for tea and she trolls me, I swear to god I asked for black tea and she just wouldn’t give it to me. So I had to point and then her and her friends laughed at me.. YO Chinese speaking confidence issues already don’t make me go cry to my roommate about it. Anyways. Ran across this during my …walk?

THREE STORIES OF APPLE

Can we talk about breakfast, this one guy makes a thick crepe , opens it up, pours an egg in it, fries that shit then rubs hella sauce on top, folds it in half, puts a piece of lettuce in the middle and asks for 3 kuai not even it’s 2.5... Seriously every morning I just want to tell him how much of a bro he is… but I can’t speak English, honestly I can’t really speak Chinese. So here I am.

 I recently bought a bunch of DVDS most notable is Ice Age. 

Its legit, Chinese audio, get my learn on, I can actually understand most of it anyways, it was 20 kuai, I spend money like it’s my job, and by that I mean I spend 5 dollars on lunch and dinner. So nice I went to a Chinese kong fu movie, no engrish subtitles(it's K all fighting, mostly this one women dunking face to avenge her master) and a upscale restaurant with 5 people, spent a total of 10 dollars.

Anyways I ate this essentially BBQ squid tonight it was so much yumm

And plus one for location, every morning I leave my dorm I see this building. Doesn’t it look like it should be in Coruscant??

  

 I can talk about more interesting things or go into detail about things I do, if you guys want something throw some feedback this way.

This and fb chat has become my outlet for engrish. Good night!

Solo adventures

So I have the last day(of first week) of class tomorrow with an oral test and a skit. No matter where you are group projects are the worst. Classes have been a lot of fun, in the mornings we have a listening test and read over a dialogue then we drill on new vocab and grammar for three and a half hours with scattered breaks. The afternoons vary, some days we have a supplementary class which involves working on scenarios that you would often find yourself in while in Beijing, such as ordering food, buying stuff, and taking a taxi. Also we have 1on1s and 2on1s where we talk and talk and talk in Chinese using grammar we have been working on and getting some focused instruction. Also once a week we have to go to a public place and talk with Chinese people. So my free time, is explore time (I do actually study ) so Monday I wanted to go to a park but at the particular entrance I found, when I asked the homie if I could go through(in Chinese) he looked at me and said…. “NO” well… okay…. It’s a public park…. private entrance? 我不知道(I don’t know) . So I said screw you I’m taking the subway one stop was Yuanmingyuan park. SO I hit that. Also known as the Ruins of Yuanmingyuan it was first constructed in 1709 during the reign of the Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty as a private garden, over the next 150 years it was expanded by Chinese emperors covering a total of 864 acres. Then in 1860 Anglo-French Allied Forces plundered and blew everything up<------- Long very interesting story cut short and butchered. This fat map is what it looked like back in the day

Moving on, it is divided into three parts and I only covered one part in the three hours I walked around, Changchunyuan( the Garden of Eternal Spring) It was absolutely beautiful

In its heyday Yuanmingyuan had nearly 200 bridges. This is the only preserved old stone bridge.

Here is some photo spewing to get an idea of where I was

Zelan Hall, was on southern slope on the central axis of the ChangChun garden that covered 10,000 sq meters of land and was one of the main libraries in the Changchun Garden

They also had a Huge Panorama model of the gardens constructed from old articles and books which was amazing.

It was very beautiful, Imma have to go back and check out another section.

SO INFORMATIVE

Yo let me tell you about things that I was deprived from in my childhood:
1. Annual snow
2. Ice sports
3. THIS BIKE

4. THIS SLED

5. THIS SLIDE

It’s weird for me because growing up the coldest it ever got for 20(almost 21 OOHH BABY—oh wait it doesn’t matter)years was 15 degrees so frozen lakes are strange. Are these safe? Probably not. Do they do this in America? YO get sued.

 So all is good, Going to Tiananmen square this weekend and going see a movie in Chinese YUSSS. Good luck homies on winter quarter, it’s always the worst.