At the halfway mark

Dang, it's already been a month since I've been here. Before our next semester starts, we have a week-long social study project, where we can choose to go to Shanghai or Inner Mongolia or the Shaolin Temple or (best of all) a farming village outside Beijing.

Our trip leaves on Sunday, so I'm spending this weekend relaxing, cleaning and preparing. When we get back I'll have to write my social study paper and then jump right into L4 Chinese.

My room is currently invaded by drying clothes due to distrust of dryer and desire to conserve energy. The 服务员 laughed when she came in.

I feel like the past semester has gone by so fast that I haven't had any time to reflect on how far I've come with Chinese. For one, my speaking confidence has dramatically improved, thanks to the language pledge. I'd say I'm more confident speaking in poor Chinese than I am speaking gramatically correct Japanese now. (The atrophy of my Japanese is another topic...).

We went to the Silk Market yesterday, which was not my thing, but seeing so many foreigners getting ridiculously ripped off in their haggling was eyeopening. By just speaking Chinese we have such an advantage, though this might be counteracted by my guilt complex. The best part of the outing was when a seller said "要买就买，不买就算了" （If you're going to buy, then buy. If not forget it.), which was direct from our textbook. I probably confused the woman with my subsequent glee.

Overall, shopping in China is such a stressor. There's no such thing as browsing, and salespeople will literally take you by the arm ("Lady-- you buy tshirt?") and pull you into their stall. When you look at things they like to pull out something else and ask you if you like it. Somehow they always pick out the last thing I would possibly consider buying. Chinese and American ideas of fashion are very different. There's a lot of flounciness going on here. And cheap synthetic materials. We occasionally come across something that we've seen our teachers wear--or more surreally, that a friend has back at home.

Well anyway, today instead of visiting the Temple of Heaven, I'm taking it easy. I'm going to walk around a bit and review some Japanese. I did compile a list of potential sites to visit in the future. Input appreciated:

1. Beijing Museum of Tap Water
2. Horse Culture Museum of China
3. China Museum of Agriculture (Okay, this one is for real. Too bad no one will want to go with me.)
4. The Bee Museum of China
5. China Display Hall of Quaternary Glacier Relics

There are also some organic farms on the outskirts of Beijing that are open to visitors that I want to check out. The farm we're going to is (I'm fairly sure) not organic, and I'm curious to see what organic farming looks like in China. I've seen some organic produce in the grocery store, but it's hard to tell because food labeling regulation in China is really whack. Some packaged foods have no ingredient list or nutritional information at all. Also, instead of calories they use kilojoules. This was quite a confusion at first. I was so impressed that a bottle of juice could provide a days worth of calories.

Oh China.