你傷了我的心: November 2005

stuff i need to do, but don't want to

- write 2 field books, one is a thesis driven essay about the relationship between China and the U.S. that has to be at least 1,500 words and one that is like a story about growing up in a Chinese village that has to be at least 1,200 words... fun
- get voice clips of different Chinese accents and dialects and then do experiments and surveys on them for my stupid DISP
- study for my Chinese final and take my Chinese final

So I talked to a class of 50 Chinese students. It was a listening/speaking class and the teacher thought it would be a good opportunity for them to meet an American... so in return for using them to fill out my survey, I had to talk to them about life in the U.S.... dude, I didn't know what to talk about, but yeah... it went ok.

i saw nba on cctv

so i got to see a couple NBA games live while i was doing my rural stay... cool! i forgot who played and who won (i didn't get to see most of the games end)... but the point is, i feel soooo american now. wait, i do remember... dallas vs. san antonio, houston vs. NO/oklahoma city.

beijing host family's house

their living room, the bathroom is the door ahead on the left up ahead... my room is straight ahead, and to the right (can't see it in the pic, but it's directly across from the bathroom) is the kitchen and the front door

the knobs in the kitchen that i must turn and turn on to take a warm shower.

the bathroom

my bed with my laptop on it... no internet :(

when you walk in the front door, this is the kitchen... and it'll be on your room. straight ahead is the bathroom, to the right would be my room, and to the left is the living room.

rural stay

host family's living room

host family's courtyard

me and kay at the entrance to the village (which is like 45 minutes away from beijing)

my bedroom that i had to myself, which also had its own bathroom

my rural host familiy

so my rural stay was more like a suburban stay. you know how i'm like the only student without a western toilet in my beijing host family's house??? i was the only student whose rural host family who had a western toilet. my rural host family's house was huge. it had 7 bedrooms, a living room, an office (with a computer and cards table), a kitchen, and 3 bathrooms. i had the best warm showers ever in china at their house. it felt so good, i think the only way to describe them is "orgasmic." yes, i took 2 showers during our 3 day/2 night rural stay.

my host family was very nice. they had 2 daughters, but one works somewhere in beijing so i only met the younger daughter when she came back from boarding school. apparently, lots of kids in the rural areas board at school in beijing from mon-fri and come home saturday and then go back sunday. anyway, in conclusion: it was great.