Days 23 through 25 – First Few Days with ISA

六月二十二到二十四号，星期五到星期日

I left the house around 7:40am on Friday and took Line 13 to 五道口 where I switched to Bus #731 to the Runzejiaye Hotel. I got there a bit early and sat down in the lobby to wait for the rest of the students to come down. The resident director is Chen Xi. The first student who came down was Josh. He had participated in this program last summer as well. Then, two other people came down: Jack (from the same school as Josh – The Citadel, an ROTC school in South Carolina) and Chris (from Texas). The other people came a bit later: Tyler, Nidia, Myles, Maggie, Samantha, David, Fumihiro, and Jennifer (with the same last name as me, from Orange County, CA). Once every introduced each other, we walked through the north gate of Tsinghua to the ISA office building (Building #24 called XinZhai). We went to the third floor and took the level test. The intermediate test was very difficult. I couldn’t read most of the characters. At least, I aced the oral part.

We ate lunch after the test. Since it was Jack’s birthday, Chen Xi treated us to Zongzi and cake. Then she gave us orientation material like our schedules, maps, and other stuff, and presented some important information on Powerpoint. After orientation, we walked to 五道口 where the majority of the students rented bikes. The deposit was 200 RMB and Chenxi managed to get the renting guy to give them bikes for 4 RMB/day instead of the usual 5 RMB/day. I was considering renting one, but decided to get it another day after discussing it with my mom. They biked back to the hotel while I went back via Line 13 subway.

~ end of entry, 3:50pm, June 26th, Living room table

Saturday, I met the ISA crew at 9:30am in front of the hotel, where a van drove us to the Temple of Heaven. I had already gone with Mom so I just glanced at a few areas. I took a couple of pictures, but there wasn’t really any need for me to since Sam took pictures of everyone and everything. I had some fun chatting with my class mates while walking through the sites. Fumihiro and David are both from a college in Alaska studying aviation. Fumi is from Japan and David is from Hawaii. Chris is half Chinese.  Sam’s family speaks Cantonese. Josh and Jack both go to The Citadel military school in South Carolina. Josh is pretty good at Chinese, while Jack struggles a lot. Tyler speaks Chinese very well and is quite the haggler when purchasing souvenirs. Most of the students are juniors in college and had taken some sort of Chinese class. Although I speak much more fluently, they probably know more characters than I do.

After Tiantan, we took the van to a Peking Duck place called Bianyifang. We had lots of good food: In addition to two ducks, we got spinach, muer and fish, tofu, walnuts with chicken, and shaomai. It’s too bad Jen was feeling sick. She got car sick and didn’t eat much. The duck here cost 296 RMB a bit more expensive than Quanjude. Once we finished lunch, we went to Tiananmen Square. There wasn’t anything special besides the extravagant portrait of Maozedong and the unbelievably massive crowd of people trying to see his body (which apparently has been plasticized). When we got to the Forbidden City, we started taking lots of photos. There were so many places to go within Gugong (Forbidden City) but we were tight on time so we only glossed through the place. I thought the most interesting place we passed by was the Imperial Garden. It was very crowded, though, so I didn’t get very good pictures.

We were pretty exhausted by the end of the tour and relaxed inside the van’s air conditioning. The driver was kind enough to drop me off at the 116 bus stop by Huguosi (Dongsishiertiao). I took the bus and got home quickly.

~ end of entry 4:17pm, June 26th, Living room table

Sunday, Chen Xi decided to give us a rest day. We were originally going to go to Nanluoguxiang, the Bell Tower, and Houhai, but the rest of the students were Jetlagged and I was tired from yesterday’s outings. I took this day to catch up on some journal writing, and reviewed some Chinese characters. It was a rainy day so I didn’t go out. Instead, I spoke to Mom about the bike renting issue and decided that we would bike to Tsinghua tomorrow and drop the red bike off so that I could have it for my daily use.

~ end of entry 4:24pm, June 26th, Living room table