3rd Week at HBA

The third week in general has been a very good week. As usual, during the week we had intense language learning, with travel left for the weekend. So here is a summary of the most important aspects of this week:

Last Sunday I went to my Chinese family's home to eat dinner. My Chinese mom cooked a lot of very good dishes amongst which were dumplings, various vegetables, and meats. I spent a very good time with them, since we were able to converse about a lot of topics, such as life at Yale/Harvard, how we're adjusting to China, and even the simplified/traditional Chinese characters topic. My Chinese mother told us that she would be going to Inner Mongolia, so I probably won't meet with my family for two weeks (since next week I'll be going to Shanxi).

Classes are the same: intense, difficult, but extremely helpful. This week, for some reason, I really felt my Chinese level is improving rapidly. I felt that at times I could speak at a pretty fast pace without having to think exactly how to say something in Chinese. Of course, my Chinese is far from perfect, but it is hard to believe how far I have gone in only three weeks. This makes me very excited, and I can't wait to see my Chinese level at the end of the 9 weeks.

On Friday I went with two other HBA students to the Forbidden City, and this time we actually had time to enter and see everything. I really liked the Forbidden City, but as other people have noted, all of the construction makes the experience a little less enjoyable. A lot of the things that seemed interesting were not open to public, and the scenery was not as beautiful with so much construction. None the less, I still enjoyed the Forbidden City a lot and hope to go back to see all of the parts I could not see due to time constraints.

After going to the Forbidden City, we decided to go to Houhai. There, after bargaining for about an hour, we were able to ride two 三轮车 for￥120. We were able to see the 胡同 and buy things on the street. Overall it we had a very good time.

Saturday, we went with our teachers to the Ming Tombs. Overall, I think the tombs were slightly disappointing. There wasn't that many things to see, all of the tombs were very similar, and the structures greatly resembled the Forbidden City. I think the history behind the tombs is very interesting, but visiting the tombs is a bit 马马虎虎. There were many people that liked the tombs, though. This is only my opinion.

Finally, it is worth writing a bit about what is to come next week. So, for my social study week I decided to go to 山西 Shanxi. I chose Shanxi because we will be visiting many interesting sites, such as the old city of Pingyao and Buddhist sites. Very interesting. We will be leaving this Friday on train and arriving Saturday morning. There is a possibility that I won't have internet access readily available in Shanxi, so I might have to post two posts (weeks 4 and 5) at the same time when I return to Beijing.

I leave you with the very few photographs I took at the Forbidden City (my camera ran out of battery power, so I was not able to take many photographs). Hopefully I will be able to post in Shanxi. If not, I'll write down what I want to post and post it when I get back. 再见！