I should post things more often!!

On Tuesday two of the grad. students from my lab took Brian and Tiffany and I out for lunch at a pizza buffet. They had tons of great food, I especially liked these chicken on a stick things (and so did everyone else). People would pile like 20 of them on a plate. It was a pretty interesting place and it was very loud b/c there as a group of middle school students there, I’d guess maybe they were mostly around 16 or 17 years old, and there was also all the beer you could drink on tap. So they were taking advantage of that and everyone had a pint size mug (or 2) in their hands full of beer at all times. A few of them were pretty much covered in beer by the end of the lunch and the floor near the drink machines was flooding with spilled drinks. I was curious about how their teachers were going to react to them all being drunk when they got back to class… anyway it’s true what they say, drinking does make you look cooler.

On Thursday we had a our usual lunch with the JI and then we went to the bank b/c we had to pay for a deposit on our apartment and then we also bought some more minutes for our cell phones. I was really surprised when I checked my balance b/c after having the phone about 3 weeks I had only spent 21 yuan or about $2.50. I mean I don’t use the phone that much here but that still seemed like very little compared to home where I think people pay that much for about 2 days of phone service.

Then on Thursday night my lab went out to dinner to celebrate the graduation of one of the PhD students. He is the first student to earn his PhD in our research group. The restaurant we went to had a karaoke thing on the TV and a couple of people sang but really not that many people wanted to try it. Oh and I also found out on Thursday that one of my friends from UM is going to be living on the Beida campus this summer and so she moved in today. Hopefully we’ll find some cool stuff to do this weekend.

Back to Work

Yesterday we saw the first rainstorm we've seen since we got here. It only lasted about half an hour though and afterwards it was nice out again for the rest of the day. Tiffany actually had to go in for work in her lab and then to a group meeting so Brian and I went back to the Chemistry building in the evening to pick her up and then we all went to the grocery store and I got a bunch more snacks. Today we're back at work in the labs. The buses are always really crowded on Mondays it seems like... well for the last 3 Mondays they have been anyway. It doesn't seem as crowded on the other weekdays.

The Weekend

On Saturday we spent most of the day around the apartment relaxing and watching movies and stuff. We went to the campus in the afternoon to use the ATM, have dinner, and go to the grocery store. Today I've pretty much just been relaxing too... Tiffany has to go into the lab this evening! And she thinks she won't get back until about 11 pm! I'm glad I don't have to work tonight... that doesn't sound fun. I think we're going to go into the city in a little bit.

End of the First Work Week

Tonight ends the first of eight weeks of research. I guess I misunderstood previously about the weekend schedule and so I have Saturday and Sunday off, which is great. I’m not really sure what I’ll do yet but it’ll be nice to have some freedom. I don’t have to go to my group meeting tomorrow either since my Professor said most of it would be in Chinese so it might not be very useful for me. I’m glad to have more free time to explore than I had originally thought.

The First Work Week

The first day of lab went very well, I didn’t really have a whole lot of work to do, but it was good to meet everyone I’ll be working with. Everyone in the lab seems very friendly and helpful. I finally went to the on campus cafeterias for the first time today. The food is very good and there are a ton of things to choose from and it’s very inexpensive compared to the cafeteria at home.

During the next two days of work I did a little more stuff. Yesterday evening we had a farewell dinner for Dr. Coppola with lots of pizza. There is this really strange rule at the salad bar at the pizza restaurant… we had a table of 6 people and so that means we get two bowls which people have to take turns emptying onto smaller plates but if you can’t fit all of what you take on the plate then you have to pay a penalty… we couldn’t really figure it out. After the dinner we went to a Kung Fu show… it was really for tourists I guess b/c the audio for the whole thing was in English… but it was pretty cool. Then we headed back home to get some sleep.

Today (Thursday) we had our weekly lunch at the Jade Garden Café restaurant… there was a lot of very good food as usual. The lab work has been pretty lazy so far today, just a lot of reading.

The Weekend

On Saturday we skipped a trip we had been planning to go on to the Great Wall and instead we went shopping again, and for lunch we had the Peking Duck! It was an award winning restaurant and they had all these famous people that has signed things for the restaurant. Everywhere you go shopping there are these five Olympic mascot bears that I think are very cool. I got a set of 5 little ones. Dr. Coppola bought a huge bag of the bear stuff. We also managed to locate the hidden Lacoste shirts that we had been looking for, and I think Brian bought 4 watches almost without even trying to! We were being swarmed by people selling watches as we were going home! Then we went to the Beijing American Club for a reception for the UM alumni in the Beijing area. There was a starbucks in the same building. There were a ton of people at the alumni reception! I was surprised. We met a lot of new people, and we also met some other exchange students from UM who were working at Beida this summer. Hmm yeah then after that we just went home.

Then on Sunday it was our last day before we started working, so we went to the summer palace. We took a little boat around a lake and stuff and we walked around a lot and saw the palace. We also went shopping for a little while again, but I think everyone had done enough shopping recently so we ended up heading home pretty early to rest for our first day in the lab.

Nearing the End of Boot Camp

We spent a lot of during the last week around the Joint Institute... mostly learning the Chinese language in class and learning more about Chinese culture. The students from PKU have been taking us around to a few of the restaurants on campus that we can walk each day, and I feel like I know my way around the campus fairly well now. On Thursday night, right as I was going to bed, we got a phone call saying we had to go to the police station the next morning to let them know we had moved into our apartment, b/c it was our last day we could register w/o being too late!

On Friday there was a lunch to celebrate a delegation from UM arriving in Beijing, and we went to that and had a chance to see our research advisors again. There were lots of people taking pictures and the food was very good. It was the first time I've had fried rice since I got to China! After that we had to go to the police station and write apologies b/c it turned out we were actually 2 weeks late registering (we only really had 24 hrs after we arrived to do that I guess). So then after that we went to dinner at a great Japanese restaurant! There was a ton of great food.. well I thought so anyway, but it was too bad b/c Brian can't eat a lot of the things b/c he is allergic and then Tiffany can't eat anything that has meat or fish in it so neither of them could eat many of the dishes that were served. The PKU students who are travelling to UM and our advisors from PKU were at the dinner.. and so were a bunch of the people from the UM delegation. A few people gave speeches at the dinner, and Brian gave a great speech. It was a lot of fun.

Another Week of Boot Camp

Today was our first language lesson in a couple of days. We had a fairly short day... well that was in partially because Tiffany got sick in the morning, but luckily she recovered before dinner time. We tried to go back to a bar called Lush for dinner but it actually turned out to be closed b/c they were installing air conditioning or something. We found a marketplace that we didn't know existed and we looked around there a little. Then we went back to a restaurant that we had gone to before. I think it was our first time actually eating in a restaurant where we couldn't really use english on our own in the whole time we've been here. Everything went pretty well until I tried to order a second gin and tonic b/c the waitress didn't know what had been in my glass (I had just pointed to the menu the first time b/c gin doesn't seem to translate into Chinese well from what I heard before). She said some things I didn't understand and I was pretty confused so I just tried to say it in english but that didn't work so I ordered a Coke instead... then we all laughed a lot b/c it had been a pretty awkward situation and I had just ordered a coke i didn't want just to avoid having to think... then I realized I could order beers easily enough w/o a menu, since I remembered it from our language class, so I just went for that. Well anyway the dinner went pretty well and then we went to the starbucks and one store near the bucks and then came back to the apartment.

Great Wall

Today we went to the great wall, as one might imagine from the title of my post... anyway, it was great. Brian and I climbed really high up... as far as they would let us go but then it was pretty much past time to go back anyway. It was extremely hot at some parts but it was a lot of fun and it was my favorite place we've been so far. I still haven't figured out how to post pictures so I'll eventually put them up on some site and post a link. We got to see some of the country and smaller towns, and the driving that goes on here is pretty crazy compared to at home sometimes. I think we saw 3 accidents on the 3 hour drive home and spent a lot of the time on the wrong side of the road. Oh, and I found out that in China the rules for drinking in a car are different from in the US. Here, only the driver is not allowed to drink in the car, so I had a beer in the car on the way home... I think that makes a lot more sense than what we do at home.

Orchestra

Yesterday I got to go the Starbucks here and it's exactly like the ones at home. We went to the Wu Dao Kou area for the first time and also to the Orchestra at Tsinghua University. The Orchestra was cool and we got to go up on stage afterwards and see the instruments. After that we went back to the Wu Dao Kou area and there watched some live music and it was a lot of fun. We got home kind of late but luckily we didn't have to be anywhere until about 9:00 am.

Then today we went to the Lama Temple and also to the Confucius Temple. We saw a LOT of Buddhas including one that was 18 meters high! Dr. Penner-Hahn bought an interesting hat outside of the Lama temple that looks like the character Raiden from Mortal Kombat. Then we went over to the Confucius Temple but it turned out that a lot of it was under renovation so we didn't stay for very long. We took some great pictures by a huge statue of Confucius. After that we had lunch and came home and stayed at the apartment for most of the rest of the day. I bought a ton of junk food at the grocery store and so now i have a lot of snacks. A lot of the food here still comes with little plastic toys in it I guess, I got a cartoon character in some ice cream cones and found a star shaped piece of plastic in my cheetos. I think I'm going to start collecting the little toys.

Tomorrow we go to the Great Wall! Hopefully it's not too hot... Brian checked the weather and it was something in the 50's F at home today and like 91 F here.

Meeting Our Advisors

We met our advisors two days ago at a very nice lunch. My advisor is Professor Liu, and he seems to be extremely friendly and helpful. I also met three of the graduate students I will be working with in the lab over the summer, and they too seemed very friendly. I'm looking forward to starting work there and the place I am working in looked very nice.

The four students from Peking University who will be going to UM for the summer took us on a tour of the Chemistry building here after the lunch. It was very large and we got to see a lot of cool tools and equipment. Then we went around the campus for awhile and had dinner with the PKU students on campus. They've been very helpful with showing us around, and I'm hoping we'll get to see them again at the end of the summer back in Ann Arbor.

Yesterday we went to a clothing market where we bought a bunch of stuff. I got ten shirts and a pair of shoes, and Tiffany and Brian also made similar purchases. We also went to a pearl and jewelry market, where we all bought some stuff and the Professors made a lot of purchases. I got called a crazy man a couple of times during the bargaining process and it was pretty funny. We were extremely tired after the whole day of shopping, and we went to a noodle restaurant and ate until we could hardly move. Then we went home and went to bed.

Today was a calm day with language lessons and a culture lesson as well. We had an all you can eat lunch of dumplings and we ordered about 300 dumplings I would estimate. It was a huge amount of food. We tried to get a copy of the menu to translate at home since we'll be eating there often, but the menu is apparently a secret! The restaurant was happy to copy the entire menu by hand though, which I didn't really understand at all, but we ended up getting the menu. Next time Brian, Tiffany, and I can try to order for ourselves.

Link to Photos and PKU trip homepage

Here is a link to a Photo Diary and to the UM-PKU trip homepage:

http://umich.edu/~michchem/UMPKU/2007/USDiary.html

http://umich.edu/~michchem/UMPKU/2007/

A Couple Days Later

So we've spent two days in Beijing so far... and I think we are doing pretty well. The first day we spent an hour or so wandering around the area near our apartment building and then we all fell asleep in the living room for about 3 hours somehow. We woke up just in time to get ready for dinner and we ate at a great restaurant with a bunch of people from the Joint Institute at PKU. The meals here are very large and usually we order a lot of dishes and share them around the whole table.

Yesterday we went to the Forbidden City and that was very great. It is huge and it took maybe 3 hours or so to walk through most of it. I think the Emperors who lived there must have been the happiest people alive. Our language instructor, Sophia, came with to help us start to learn the language and a few other people from the Joint Institute came as well. We got a lot of pictures but I'm still not sure how to post pictures on here because everything is still in Chinese on my computer screen right now.

We bought cell phones yesterday too... which took a long time to figure out but luckily I know how to enter things in English on my cell phone now. It's pretty interesting.. you pick out a phone, then you have to buy a card with a phone number attached to it to use the phone (similar to in America)... but the phone numbers are priced differently based on how difficult they are to remember! I thought that was so unusual. So I bought a cheap cell phone number because people can just save the number so I figured nobody would notice. But then the first person I gave my cell phone number to was Ma Wudan from the Joint Institute and the first thing she said was... "tough to remember!" I couldn't really believe it! I can't imagine anyone in America worrying about how tough my cell phone number was to remember.

We are here

We just got to our apartment now... it's very nice. very big couch... nice tv... i think we all like it a lot. The trip went about as smoothly as it could have. The first flight seemed very very long and we wished we had taken advantage of the free drinks at the frequent flyer club thing but the trip really probably could not have gone better. Tomorrow we have the whole day to ourselves and we're not exactly sure what we're going to do yet, probably try to go shopping for some things we realized we need. I'm not sure how we're going to find the stores though and I'm having trouble using the internet b/c a lot of websites (blogger included) load in chinese here and i'm not sure how to switch it back to english yet.