I'm home now!

During the last few days after finishing work I spent time shopping and we went back to some of our favorite restaurants and places from the trip. We spent some of the time cleaning up the apartment before we left and packing our things. About three days before leaving I was really excited to go back home, but then on the last day I was feeling sad about leaving. I had a ton of fun in those last few days, and I think that was because all of us were off of work so there was nothing left that we ever really had to do if we didn’t feel like it.

After making it home, I am sure I want to go back sometime as soon as I can. I think the next thing I’d do is maybe return to focus on studying Chinese language, at least for awhile before doing anything else. I feel like I need a little more of a foundation for learning the language before I will be able to learn quickly just from going around and interacting with people. I definitely had a lot of fun though, and I am really happy that I went.

It’s not as strange of a feeling to be home as I thought it would be, at all. I kept thinking, ‘wow, how weird will it be to speak to everyone who speaks English again?’ but really it took virtually no time to get readjusted to being in the US. I just still feel like the places we spent all of our summer at aren’t that far away though… as if I could just return quickly if I wanted to, despite it being almost 24 hours of travel time away.

Poster Session

Last night was our joint poster session with the group of students from PKU who are at UM right now. I thought it went really well, everyone gave good presentations, and Wei Wang gave an excellent final presentation that was a great way to end the night (or morning in Ann Arbor). We had a really nice room here at PKU in which to view the presentations. There were three separate screens, one so we could see the other students in Ann Arbor, one for the poster being displayed, and one so that we could see what the other students were seeing in our room. It was a really comfortable place to have the presentations, and I was impressed with how well it went.

Last Week Here!

I can’t believe it’s our last week here! The work in the lab is slowing down and I’ve just been spending most of my time preparing my poster for the presentation and taking it easy. I think it’s going to feel weird to go home at first, but I’m looking forward to it. Brian and Tiffany and I have been eating at some new places that we hadn’t gone to earlier in the trip, and getting some last shopping done. It’s been raining a lot though lately so it’s not really been ideal for going out too much. I think we’ve got a lot of cleaning to do this weekend, our apartment is kind of a mess and we’ve been putting off cleaning for the last couple of weeks because we knew we’d have to do it again at the end anyway.

I keep thinking too about how when I get back home everything is going to cost more again, and I feel like I’m not going to want to buy anything because it will all seem so expensive compared to everything here! In China I can get a good meal at a restaurant for $3 or less pretty much anywhere! I dread having to go back and pay American prices!

Tiffany's Birthday Celebrations

This week I feel like work is getting kind of boring… I don’t have that many experiments left to finish up, and the ones I have left each take awhile to run so I have a lot of free time. I can’t believe the trip is almost over though and that we only have about 10 days left here! The past three weeks have gone by really fast, and I don’t really know where the time went.

We went out on Tuesday night to a Mexican restaurant for Tiffany’s birthday. It was on the other side of the city and while we were getting there we walked through an area that has embassies for a ton of other countries. There were a lot of guards around at all of them and we found out we aren’t allowed to take pictures of them though. After dinner we went shopping in a really big mall and we had wanted to go to an outdoor market we heard about but it started raining so we headed home instead.

Wednesday was Tiffany’s actual birthday, and so on Wednesday we all went out with her lab to a karaoke bar/restaurant and her lab had gotten her the biggest birthday cake I’d ever seen. Afterwards we got some pizza while we waited for another huge rainstorm to pass by so that we could go get a cab go get back home. It’s been raining a lot here lately.

This last week I feel like I’ve gotten more done in the lab than I had been in previous weeks… which is good because I was concerned that I wasn’t getting a whole lot of work done. I still don’t know that I’ll have a lot of results to present at the poster session in 2 weeks… but maybe I’ll be able to get a lot done this next week.

A couple of people I know from the research lab were preparing for the TOFEL exam… it was this Saturday. It seems like a pretty hard thing to cram for right before you take it… since it’s a test on a whole language and especially the spoken part seems hard to study for in a short period of time. I spent some time this week helping out a friend from my lab with practicing for the exam. There was also a talk this week given by an organic chemist who was a nobel prize winner in the 90’s, but his talk was actually about China’s fuel economy and what options are available in the future. It was pretty good I thought… I found it interesting because it focused on a lot of more practical issues that everyone (from different fields) could relate to. It was a tricky situation though for a lot of people to understand his speaking I felt like, since it was in English but with a very strong (I think Hungarian) accent. Earlier that day even, my friend from the lab had been saying how he has trouble understanding other non-native English speakers because of their accents.

On Saturday I played badminton with a couple of people from my lab, and it was a lot of fun. I hadn’t played since I was really young I think but it was pretty easy to get used to again. It was really hot though, I think I drank about 3 bottles of water during the couple of hours we played. Today I spent some time at starbucks working on medical school applications and we went out to get pizza for dinner at the Kro’s nest.

Week 7

Last Sunday Brian and I had dinner w/ three girls from the Simmons College in Boston. Then we headed home to watch some prison break and Tiffany was at her lab having her lab meeting. We love prison break now… and I’m afraid of what I’m going to do once we finish watching season 2. It won’t be quite as bad as when lost season 3 finished but I’ll have to look for something else to watch. I better go to the movie store after working or at lunch today.

Hmm, on Monday we went with some people to the Movie Night at Lush, they showed the Matrix and it was in English, haha! It was cool to watch that but it was really loud and hard to talk at all. After the movie night we looked at some dogs at a dog market that is apparently where all of the individual dog sellers go at night or something (at least I think that’s what this guy was explaining…). The dogs were incredibly cheap compared to American prices for dogs… you could get a dog for about $10 USD. I felt bad for these dogs though b/c I donno what happens to them if they get too old before they are sold… all of them are really young puppies.

Yeah then on Tuesday after lab I just stayed in and watched some Prison Break and did a little work on the med school applications… those things are never going to get finished. Wed. we went to this outdoor food market place where they cook food outside and we ate a huge pile of chicken wings. It was a really nice night to be outside. After that I went to the propaganda club for a bit with my friend Victoria and a bunch of people from her program here but I came home very early.

Yesterday night I stayed in and talked to my girlfriend online for a long time. She’s in Ghana this summer and we don’t get to talk often enough. Tiffany was at a lab meeting and there was a lot of confusion about how she was getting home. I guess what happened was she got a cab near the restaurant they ate at but somehow she ended up sharing it with a couple of people who were headed the same way… but it was late at night and she was understandably nervous about the situation so she just got out of the cab near the JI building and called Brian and I. It was a bit disappointing to hear that someone had stuck her in a cab w/ unfamiliar people, as it was dark out and for a girl in a big city that just seems like a pretty scary situation. Anyway though so we got a cab to where she was and just all came back together. I was pretty happy with our ability to explain to the cab driver that we just wanted to go back to where we had come from b/c he didn’t seem to know the same name for our apartment complex as we did at first but it wasn’t too difficult. I’m nowhere near as good at Chinese as I would have expected to be for being here almost 7 weeks now. hahaha I always think of how embarrassing it will be when my friends at home see how little Chinese I’ve learned.. I know enough to get around and stuff but that’s very little and having a real conversation would be nearly impossible… :(

Oh, and on Wed. afternoon the wallet and cell phone of a guy from my lab were taken right out of the lab computer room! I mean that stuff happens at home too but it’s crazy how much crime we’ve been hearing about lately. I was really happy that I had my computer with me or it would probably be long gone. Anyway, needless to say, I’m being extra careful with things now!

This weekend Brian has found a place we might go to called “Happy Valley”. It’s some kind of amusement park and it looks like it has shows and stuff too so we might go out there.

Last few days

We’ve gotten a new door on our apartment now. We haven’t heard anything back from the police about anything related to the break-in… but it seems like it might be nearly impossible for them to catch whoever did it anyway. The lab work is going well. I had kind of a funny thing happen in the lab… I’ve learned how to tell the solvent bottles in the lab apart by the characters, and so I know the character for water but there’s one that comes before it that probably means like ‘pure’ or something, I’m not really sure what it is but so I just know the water one. I was filling up this water bottle the other day and I’m smelling something really strong and I thought someone was just using something with a strong odor and so I keep filling up the bottle and then the guy I work with comes over and he’s like oh that’s not water! It turned out it was a really concentrated solution of ammonia and so the character for water is still there but the other one was different. So I’m an idiot anyway and now I know to look at it more carefully or to just smell it.

Yesterday I worked on some med school applications and Tiffany got a manicure or pedicure or something like that and Brian played a lot of basketball in the morning. At night we went to Kro’s nest again for dinner and then I went to the San Li Tun area (not sure if I spelled that right) with my friend Victoria to meet up with some other people we met here. It’s a really long cab ride to get there but I actually like it b/c you get to see a lot of the city and stuff it’s pretty cool I’d almost take the cab rides just for fun. We went to a bunch of bars and clubs and stuff and it was a ton of fun… probably my favorite thing I’ve done here so far. I didn’t realize how late it was though… I didn’t check my phone all night and when I got out of the cab near home I was thinking, ‘boy, it’s bright out at night’ and then I realized the sun was rising and I was like, oh crap… hahaha. Well it was a lot of fun and I feel kind of dead today but I’d def. do it again. We also met some girls from Simmons College who are here for a chemistry program also and we’re having dinner w/ them in about an hour. I honestly donno if I’ll be able to stay awake for it but hopefully it’ll be fun.

A break in!

Ah so we had some things stolen from our apartment! The police came by and investigated a lot and they even dusted the apartment for fingerprints! It was pretty interesting to see them do that. We were with them over at the apartment last night til about 2:30 or 3:00 am, so we were really tired today. We were at the police station early this morning, and Tiffany was in the questioning room for over an hour! She was answering questions about the items that were stolen. When we asked what was taking so long… Helen told us it was because of very slow handwriting! Hahaha! The police have been very helpful to us and they seem very dedicated to helping us try to get our things back. Helen suggested (and I agreed) that the treatment we were receiving was likely because of us being foreigners, which seems really nice. It would also be nice to get the stuff that was stolen back, most of all Tiffany’s computer, b/c it really sucks to lose all of that information and work and everything that’s on there. Most everything else is pretty replaceable but that one is a pretty big pain to lose.

Weekend

This weekend I spent a pretty fair amount of time in the mornings working on medical school applications… it’s a lot of writing and stuff but I think actually it’s not such a bad thing, b/c it makes me spend time looking at what schools sound like a good fit for me and considering the reasons I want to go. On Saturday Brian, Tiffany and I checked out a market area and went shopping a little. At night we went back to the Kro’s nest.. Brian and Tiffany ordered this really sick looking pizza though with no cheese (b/c Tiffany doesn’t like cheese) and so it was this giant pizza just soaked in sauce. Today I went to the Starbucks on campus for awhile and then Brian and I walked around for a long time looking for this mcdonalds that we thought was near our apartment but never found it… but we did get to see a lot of new stuff so it was probably worth it. Oh yeah we found a great dvd store right next to our apartment buildings too that has each dvd for 8 yuan. Hmm, yeah then Brian and I watched like 8 episodes of prison break tonight while Tiffany had to go into work for her lab meeting. I think it was a boring weekend probably, but I wasn’t feeling too well and I think I’m getting better tonight though so next week I will do a lot more partying. I can’t believe the trip is half over!

Today is 7/7/07!

Brian found this great pizza restaurant that’s pretty close to one of the bus stops between our apartment and the campus, it’s called Kro’s Nest. We went there last night and it had very good food I thought.

I went to my first lab group meeting this morning. The whole thing was in Chinese and the ppt slides only had a little information so it was a kind of boring 2 and a half hours but it was cool to see anyway. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep going to them b/c they are optional for me and the Professor sort of warned me they would probably be boring and that I wouldn’t enjoy them but I wanted to see it anyway so I’m glad I went. I was pretty surprised by the format though, it’s not what I thought it would be. There were 3 grad students that each gave a presentation on a research paper, but then the papers were all stuff our lab doesn’t really do and the papers used techniques none of the students in my group use, so there’s a lot of questioning and discussion that was going on over the techniques used and stuff like that. The Professor pretty much just stays out of the way and lets the students talk and there’s a lot of debating that goes on. I’m not sure if it gets a lot done toward furthering our group’s work but everyone took part pretty actively (except me of course, haha) and it seems like a cool way to learn about new things.

Lab

The graduate student that works on the project I’m working on in my lab just now finished his exams, so we did our first experiment together on Tuesday. I’m really hoping these experiments go well, since there’s not a whole lot of time. The stuff I had been doing wasn’t really related to my project, and I was just learning to use equipment and reading literature until this week. I think things will go pretty well though, and it sounds like we have a pretty reasonable plan of things set up for me to work on.. so I’m optimistic about it. I didn’t even realize today is the 4th of July until last night. I think we might go out to a 4th of July celebration at the foreigner bar we like… I’m not feeling so well today though, so I donno if I’m going to go yet.

Weekend

This last weekend I went out to the bar for about the whole day w/ my friend Victoria from UM. We had a pretty good time. She’s had a couple of really scary allergic reactions to fruit here and she’s been to the ER twice already. I think I would be thinking of going home right now if I was in her situation. I got to see the dorms here a little bit and they are really nice. Sunday was mostly just spent sitting around watching movies and stuff... Brian and I had dinner at the Italian restaurant that we like. The dishes are surprisingly small there compared to just about every other place I think I’ve been since we’ve been here… we each ordered a couple of things though.

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.

We leave today

We are leaving in about 2 hours from now... I've been getting nervous about the trip over the last couple days and I'm going to miss being at home. I think my main concern is that I'm not looking forward to the idea of the really long flight... I've been hoping that something happens similar to the Lost show on tv and we end up on an island or something.

In the last 24 hours, what have you done to prepare for your trip?

I haven't done that much preparing for the trip in the last 24 hrs or so... I'm staying at home for most of this month, and it's the first time I've lived at home for that long in almost 3 years and I don't have a job here so I feel like I'm being very lazy but I'm having a good time. I've ordered more contact lenses for the trip and made a list of things to pack and forced myself to study the language a bit for the first time. The studying chinese thing just isn't going well at all b/c I can't motivate myself to do it yet, which I'm hoping I don't regret. I played around on the faceren last night (it's kind of like facebook, see www.faceren.com) and I'm wondering if it's as popular as the facebook is here. Also, all of us that are going got our Chinese names today. Mine is 蓝聚京 and that means something like "Blue gathers in Beijing".

10 Weeks in China

What are look looking forward to the most?

I'm looking forward to learning a new language. I have heard from friends that you can buy dvd's very cheap there so I'm planning to get a lot of new movies too. This will be the longest time I've ever spent out of the country and I think it will be a cool experience.

What gives you any sense of anxiety at all about going?

I'm not really sure what kind of work I will be doing, and I'm hoping that my advisor lets me do something interesting. My fear (and expectation, really) is that I'll spend a lot of time doing data-entry work and things that are very simple, since it's probably very tough to judge what each of us know how to do going in...

Not everyone who expressed interest ended up applying to go... what was the most compelling aspect of the program that made you DECIDE you wanted to do it?

I like the idea of living in China, and that is something I have wanted to do for awhile. A few of my friends have done study abroad programs in the past, and they all had very good things to say, so I already knew I would like to go to China if I had a chance. I really like the idea of getting to try doing chemistry research in another country. I think it will be cool to see how people at another University run a research group, and I also think this setting will provide a unique set of challenges that should be interesting... I think I will learn a lot and probably have a lot of fun too.