Monday, July 7, 2008
10:24 PM

As a correction to my post from yesterday, the apartment I'm staying in actually has 3 bedrooms. So I'm not sure why grandma is sleeping on the couch. In any case, one bedroom has a computer in it, which my host mom (whom I now know as Yi Pei) just informed me has internet and she said 'ni ke yi you' (You can use/have). So that may come in handy.

OK, so this morning I woke up at 2:00 AM and had serious trouble getting back to sleep, so I went through the lessons I've saved from my online classes to prepare for what I figured was going to be the placement test. At 7:00 AM or so I came out to a nice breakfast of more of that cream stuff I like (it's actually some sort of yogurt, I think... but it's thinner than normal yogurt), some cold meat, and some slightly vinegared vegetables. Oh, and some sweet bread that was really, really good. Actually the whole thing was really, really good.

Also as a correction there's only 1 cat. Not sure why I thought there were 2. Anyhow, I told Yi Pei 'wo men mei you mao... wo de tai tai bu xihuan' (We don't have a cat... my wife doesn't like them). Kind of inane, but I'm trying.

At about quarter to 8, we both got on bikes and I followed her to the campus. It was a harrowing 15 minute ride through crazy traffic. I think the last time I actually used a bike for transportation was in college. I only almost died (at least in my head) 3 times or so. At one point she took off and squeezed between two buses which were coming in opposite directions towards each other. I had about half a second to make a decision as to whether to zip after her or not, but I ended up closing my eyes and going for it, and well, I'm still here.

I was very impressed with the 'campus'. WorldLink has 3 in Beijing. This one is on the 4th floor of a massive building called 'Lead International'. It's a large, very modern space with 20 classrooms, a cafeteria, student exchange area (with computers, wi-fi, and even a pool table), restrooms, vending machines, etc. And a nice outdoor patio. The classrooms are very white, with etched glass windows. The staff was ridiculously attentive and professional. There were 8 of us starting class today. Some of us for 4 weeks, some for as many as 16 weeks. Our orientation was given by one of the WorldLink founders, an asian woman from Australia who's been living in Beijing for 11 years. She gave us a welcome pack with notebooks, maps, a WorldLink shirt, medical insurance card, prepaid phone card, etc.

The people I started with today are of various ages and nationalities. There's a girl from Ireland, guys from Zurich, Germany, England, and North Carolina, and a girl from Korea. Of the 8 of us starting, only 3 of us had prior experience with chinese. After the orientation the other 5 were given a break and we moved classrooms to take the placement test.

The test consisted of 300 characters, above which you were to write the Pin Yin pronunciation. Underneath that were a hundred or so 'expressions' (combinations of characters) that you were to circle if you understood what they meant. Of the 300 random characters they picked, I guess I knew about 200 of them, and I knew a bunch of the expressions. Afterwards, the test administrator (a Chinese guy named Trillion... seriously) came in and individually asked each of us a few questions in chinese that we had to answer.

As a result of the placement test, the Zurich guy got bumped up a level from beginner, and the Korean girl and myself got bumped up another level from that. So I'm pretty happy with that. It'll make the rest of this class a whole lot more meaningful. It also means I've been doing pretty well with my somewhat haphazard study over the past year.

After the placement tests, two girls from the staff (one from Australia, the other Chinese) took us all out to eat at a Sichuan-style chinese restaurant across the street. We sat around a lazy-susan topped table and they ordered a bunch of stuff for us. It was AMAZING food.

After that, they took us on a walking tour of the area around the Lead International building, showing us various stores and restaurants. Then, they took us by bus to the SOS Emergency International Care facility that we belong to for the time that we're here. I have a 24-hour emergency number (999) I can call for any medical reason, and I have insurance which pays for a part of it should I need their services. It was a nice facility, complete with ER beds, an optometrist, and a pharmacy. They even have their own jet parked at Beijing International and say they can arrange an emergency medical evacuation from China within 3 hours.

On the way back we drove through part of Beijing and saw some interesting sights, like the new CCTV tower headquarters (look it up on the web; it's pretty cool). They're going crazy for the Olympics here. They're doing crazy construction and planting things all over the place. They're reducing pollution and traffic by saying only people with odd or even numbers on their license plates can drive on alternate days. And our orientation person today was saying that the 'Weather Control Bureau' (It's AWESOME that they even have one of those) is routinely shooting chemicals into the air to make it rain on some days and not others. She said the weather has been really weird this year.... humid one day, dry the next, crazy rain, then no clouds at all. She swears they're doing it all on purpose.

Our 'language exchange partners' have been chosen for us, and I'll get to meet mine at 6 PM tomorrow night. I have class starting at 8 AM. I rode home tonight in the dark and managed to find my way back. Hopefully I'll sleep better tonight than last night.

Beijing is strangely not unlike a lot of other big cities I've been in. On the surface, at least, things seem very sensible. There's plenty of shopping and available transportation, and restaurants -- they said today that 200 new restaurants open in Beijing every WEEK. There are a lot of people on bicycles, but there are also a lot of cars. And I would say the majority of the cars are foreign; as in not Chinese... but very few American cars (although I did see a couple of Buick mini-vans today.... go figure).

More tomorrow.