Clearly I'm Doing Something Exciting...

Seeing as I haven't updated since October! Sorry for the lack of updates again! My best intentions of writing several posts over the weekend was thwarted by skating, procrastination, and schoolwork. Unfortunately this week has been insanely packed with a couple internship/scholarship applications and a paper worth 50% of my grade due, so I've been busy. This weekend is packed, too, but with something far better than schoolwork – the Cup of China skating competition, which is in the ISU Grand Prix Series, which means the top skaters are in Beijing this weekend, AND I'M GOING TO SEE THEM! Two classmates and I are going tomorrow for the short programs, and then a classmate and I are also going Saturday for the long programs. Thanks to the exchange rate, we got row 15 tickets for both days for roughly 40 USD, cheap by American skating standards. I'm so excited I could burst!'Course, that means this paper needs to be finished tonight....

A Day in The Life

{In the spirit of starting classes today, I felt a sample day of what classes and life are like for me was in order. Compiled over a series of a few days during our last session}

(Proof that I actually WAS up that early!) 

6:35 AM – I wake up at an entirely too early hour to go for a run before classes. Asta, one of the other study abroad students, meets me in the lobby, and we head to Renmin University's outdoor track. By the time we get there at 7:00, there's already 40 or so elderly people running and walking, including a group of old guys walking in a group that I see everyday. I think they come to socialize as much as they do work out!

 (Renmin's gym and track - the gym was used as a practice facility for the 2008 Olympics!)

7:55 AM- Back in my dorm, I take a quick shower and then get on skype to talk to my family back home in Montana, where it's 6pm. They update me on how many new calves have been born (7 this week!).

8:45 AM- I leave for class, stopping to buy a package of little bread cakes for 1.2 RMB, roughly 18 cents USD. They go great with the (free!) cup of coffee I'll make at the center!

8:57 AM – After walking for five minutes on the streets of Beijing, I take the elevator to the 20th floor and step onto the University of Chicago's campus. The Center in Beijing is brand new and absolutely beautiful - a UChicago oasis in the midst of bustling Beijing. I make myself a (free!) cup of coffee before class starts.

9:00 AM- First class of the day, which is a lecture on early diplomacy in China with Professor Tamara Chin.

(If it looks a little empty, it's because I took the picture before class actually started)

10:30AM- After a ten minute break, we re-convene for our next class, which is a discussion of the lecture and readings for today. We spend a lot of time discussing marriage diplomacy and the role of ritual in diplomacy, as well as on an extended metaphor comparing a kow-tow to a handshake.

(Again, before class started. Excited to discuss the use of Han princesses as diplomatic currency!)

 11:30 AM- After class ends, I head with a bunch of other students to the dining hall on campus, which has a lot of different selections. They had plain broccoli once, and it tasted so much like it would at home that I hold my breath hoping they'll have it again. No luck, so instead I get a big bowl of noodles with eggs and tomato sauce for 4 RMB (60 cents!)

12:30PM – After lunch, I head to the bus stop, where I take a 355 bus. Beijing's bus system is insane – they have over 800 different routes, and one day I plan to ride them all, but not today. Instead, I head to the ice rink, housed in Jinyuan Shopping Mall, the world's second largest mall. 

1:00PM- I greet the staff at the ice rink, who are getting to know my face pretty well at this point. Skating has proven a great way to meet Beijingers; today, I have a three minute conversation (all in Mandarin!) with a little girl who wants to know if I'm a teacher and where I'm from, and a longer conversation in a mix of Mandarin and English with another skater, discussing the pros and cons of China's national figure skating system (great pairs teams, not-so-great single skaters). She tells me where the national team trains, and that practices are open to the public. I feel a field trip coming on... :)

5:00PM- Back on Renmin's campus, I drop my skating stuff off and check email and Facebook, which although blocked in China, is accessible over my Chicago VPN connection. I begin writing this blog post, and then contemplate doing Chinese homework – ultimately, I decide to put it off until after dinner.(yay procrastination!)

(My room, in a picture taken when I first arrived)

 6:15PM – I meet up with a classmate, Kimberly, for dinner in the dining hall. Despite the absence of steamed broccoli, I enjoy my meal of rice with green beans in soy sauce and some kind of meat in some kind of sauce (I opted not to ask) very much. Kimberly recounts her adventures going to get a coat tailor-made for her, and we discuss our plans for the weekend, entertaining the possibility of going to the Beijing Zoo. (They have pandas!)

 (Kimberly with another of our classmates - this picture was actually taken at lunch)

7:30PM – After a quick run to the campus convenience store for chocolate milk (better here than at home, I think), I'm back in the dorm. I settle in to do my readings for tomorrow.

8:40 PM- I read the discussion questions for tomorrow online, and post a paragraph on the discussion board for the readings, getting distracted briefly by skating blogs and picture of LOLcats. I finish up my Chinese homework for Thursday, since we have a test and will turn in the week's homework. Not recognizing a couple of characters, I leave a section blank and finish everything else.

9:30 PM- Having finished everything except that section, I head over to Kimberly's room to get help, since she's in 5^th year Chinese. She recognizes the characters, and I finish my homework. Watching her paint her nails, we end up talking for awhile about studying Chinese and life in general.

10:45 PM – I head to bed, since we have a class trip to the Great Wall tomorrow morning. One of the best parts of studying abroad is the field trips, and getting to hear your professor say that she'll be holding office hours on the Great Wall. :)

Crescat Scientia...

...vita excolatur. Let knowledge grow from more to more, and so be human life enriched. As most of you know, it's the motto of the University of Chicago, and I figured that as I move into the second session of my study abroad classes, it was worth reflecting on it, especially in light of studying abroad.

Truth be told, I had never really contemplated the motto deeply, or even shallowly for that matter. But during this past class session, I drifted off a little bit, after my professor mentioned in passing the ancient Greeks, leading me to think about how cool it would be to really study them for awhile - not like skimming history studying, but an in depth study of them. I then started contemplating how short a time four years actually is - not nearly enough to even come close to studying everything I want to. This contemplation was followed by the realization that a lifetime is a very short amount of time to study everything I want to, which in turn made me slightly depressed and wishing I was immortal.

In my class notes, I frequently make sidebar notations of things the professor mentions in passing or that pique my interest. These little notes range from book titles (The Monk and the Monkey) to subjects (Art History) to people (Alexander the Great). All are things I want to either read or study more, and I'm beginning to compile a list for when I have some elusive free time. Now, I've done this in all my classes (not so much in Chinese) throughout college, meaning that with roughly 4 notations a week in each class, 3 classes meeting twice a week, 10 weeks in a quarter, 4 quarters I've been in school =  960 subjects I want to study in more depth. Grant it, some of those things might overlap, but most of them won't, meaning I've got a lifetime of studying cut out for me. Suddenly, four years seems like an even shorter amount of time. Sure, I can still 'study' them once I graduate and have a job, but it won't be the same as having world class professors share their knowledge with you while you study full-time.

The growth of knowledge seems very tied to connections; my studying ancient Chinese civilization and how it interacted with ancient Rome made me want to learn more about Alexander the Great and read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, for instance. Even a small connection like that between the two can lead to the exponential growth of knowledge. And in the same way, living in Beijing provides me with a set of observations and experiences that I can connect with the readings and lectures in class - for example, the most recent reading for tomorrow mentioned the cosmos vs. the microcosm, which made me think about how much of Chinese culture is in relation to the microcosm, from the hutongs in Old Beijing to the iPod Shuffle  sized ancient pots we saw in the museum. That's one of the benefits of studying abroad to me: being in the culture enhances and solidifies learning; it allows you to make more "connections". Being here just makes everything more relevant - having been to the Forbidden City and discussing ancient court life lets me imagine it in more detail, or at least historical accuracy. (Though that's actually debatable, though that's a different topic - see, another connection!) Being here just offers my imagination a million different paths to considering a topic, and that's one of the things I've enjoyed about being here.

Crescat Scientia, vita excolatur. Let knowledge grow from more to more....exponentially through sidebar notes made during class....through connections made from living in a completely opposite culture....by encountering different perspectives on the same topic.... and even from thirteen weeks straight of Chinese food. And so be human live be enriched. :)

It's Beginning to Feel a lot like Finals...

Because my classes here are back to back for three weeks each, not running simultaneously, I have a final paper due tomorrow.

Prior to now, it hasn't really felt like being at school/UChicago - more just a vacation where I'm having fun and messing around taking a class on ancient China for the heck of it.

The language, the city, and the class itself may change, but the feeling doesn't. It's that choking feeling of the stress mounting, realizing that you are utterly and completely out of ideas for the final paper due tomorrow. It's the rushing to scarf down lunch so you can get back to work, though it's a little more difficult when you're eating rice with chopsticks. It's buying dinner now so you don't actually have to stop work to eat, and it's the feeling that if you can just make it until Thursday night you'll be okay. It's only compounded by the fact that I have another project for one of my extracurriculars due on Friday, so I definitely feel like I'm at UChicago, just with slightly poorer air quality. Oh UChicago, how I've missed you. :)

We leave for Xi'an tomorrow night, so between that and the final paper/other project, I likely won't update again until next Monday. Now, about that paper...

WE'RE GOING TO.......XI'AN!!!!!!

.The above title was meant to convey an Oprah-like suspense, similar to when she announced at the beginning of this season that the entire audience was going to Australia. Which I've only read about, but I imagine was quite suspenseful. At the end of this class section of the quarter (our ten week quarter is divided into three class sections of three weeks each, with a week long break at the end of the first), we were supposed to be going on a class trip to Chengde, but today that was officially changed to Xi'an!

While both have a ton of history (heck, all of China does!), Xi'an has the distinction of being home to the world famous Terracotta soldiers, which I am insanely excited to see. They're one of those icons of China that you hear/read so much about, and I'm excited to get to see them! I suppose the other famous icon is the Great Wall, which, coincidentally, we're going to tomorrow. I definitely think the best part of civ abroad is getting to go on field trips. :)

The trip to Xi'an is eleven hours by train, so we'll be leaving from Beijing at 9:30 at night and taking the overnight train. It's nice that we'll wake up and be there, but at the same time, I wish it could be daylight so I can see more of the countryside. We'll stay in Xi'an until Saturday or Sunday night (I can't remember which), and then come back on the overnight train. Overall, it should be a ton of fun - thus far, I've loved getting to go to museums and historical sites, and plus traveling with a bunch of other UChicago students is bound to be a blast. I'll make sure to update and take lots of pictures. :)

Random note: One of Xi'an's sister cities is Kansas City. Hopefully Xi'an will be more exciting. 

Center Opening 4, or, Economics and Lunch!

On Thursday, I had been asked along with one other student to take notes at the International Symposium on Family and Labor Economics, sponsored by UChicago and Renmin University. It was an all day event held on campus, where different academics from the US and China presented their papers on – you guessed it – family and labor economics! The day included plenty of free food and coffee, which was good- by the end of the day, I needed it.

The first paper presented was presented by James Heckman, one of the Nobel Laureates in econ that was in Beijing for opening. Another Laureate, Gary Becker, was also at the conference and the opening. Although I'm not an econ major, the papers were pretty interesting. Many of them, Heckman's especially, had a lot of equations, and I love the idea of being able to explain human behavior in terms of mathematical equations, even if I can't do it myself.

When we broke for lunch, Sidi (the other student) and I got to accompany the VIPs back to the center for lunch. I don't know whether or not to make a big deal out of eating lunch with Nobel Laureates – before Monday, I had no clue who they were, and they're just people who got awards for their work. But at the same time, it is kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity, so while I don't want to brag about it, I guess it was pretty cool. :) The only problem was that lunch involved noodles and watermelon, which greatly enhanced the possibility of me screwing up eating and making a mess of everything. Fortunately, no catastrophes occurred, and my only etiquette error may have been cutting the watermelon too loudly. The discussion focused primarily on economics, and was largely over my head, but what really impressed me is how passionate they are about their work and are still working, when most Americans their age have retired. It makes sense, though – you don't win Nobel prizes for a job or research you're ambivalent about.

The afternoon portion of the conference started to drag a little bit, although some of the works were interesting. One of the papers studied the effect of the Cultural Revolution on children's education (it was bad, fyi), and another covered the gender wage gap in China (getting worse, it seems). It struck me that thirty years ago, these papers likely could not have been researched or presented in China – since both ultimately came to negative conclusions, they probably would have been censored. It's s testament to how far China has come, though I'm certainly no expert. That one of the presenters was able to make a slight joke about the Cultural Revolution, and that people were able to chuckle, seems to me to be a very good sign.

That's it for my updates on this week, I'm sorry it's been so long since I've written, and that what I've written is so long! I hope you enjoyed it. :) If you have any questions or things you'd like me to discuss in an upcoming post, please let me know, either through comments/email/facebook. Also, assuming my internet connection lasts (it's been spotty recently), there should be more new pics up on Facebook!
Zai Jian!
~Karissa