Tomorrow, I head off to Sichuan province for a week's vacation. Sichuan is in southern China, just east of Tibet, and is known for it's spicy food, giant pandas, and beautiful scenery. To stretch my legs after the 26 hour train ride, I've got plans to climb Emei Shan, a 3000m mountain with supposedly incredible views to see, Buddhist monasteries to visit, and lots and lots of angry monkeys to and/or run from. I've been advised to not wear any red clothing- as this color apparently upsets the monkeys. And as long as a monkey doesn't steal my camera, in my next post I promise there will be lots of pictures.
But this will be probably my last post for a week, although I'm hoping one of those monasteries on Emei Shan has Wi-fi. I had intended to write more, but I've got a three-hour exam tomorrow morning, and I want to be well-rested.
So because there might be some Yalies who recently won Light Fellowships that are checking out this blog, I wanted to use this post to write about my ACC experience so far. But, since the experience has been so rich, and my 3 hour exam tomorrow morning is so soon, I only have time to publish the first part of my post, about why I enjoy ACC's hard-working but relaxed and down-to-earth community.
When you get to know a fellow student in China, one of the questions that inevitably gets asked is: why did you decide to come to China to learn Chinese? I anticipated that many of my fellow students would say that the reason they're studying Chinese is because it looks good on a resume, or because they're grooming themselves to become CEOs .
But surprisingly, the majority of the students aren't ruthlessly set on becoming Chairman of the Board. And this laid-back attitude results in a lot of opportunities for great conversation and fun times. So even though we all work hard, in the background everyone is fairly laid-back.
The teachers have a similar attitude- because many of them are young graduates of Chinese universities. Although our classes are often ruthlessly efficient, the teachers are always willing to joke around and relax. I've played ping pong with my teachers and even run into some of them at Bar Blu, an ACC weekend hotspot. And aside from all the fun, they're great teachers- I would say that good teachers are responsible for the quality of Chinese I can currently speak.
This coming week, I'll find out how good that quality actually is, as I bargain with monks on Emei Shan and try to figure out how to order Sichuan's famous dishes. And on the 26 hour train journey, I hope to queue up some blog posts for the next few weeks, which will give me time to withstand China's unbearably slow internet and upload some pictures of monkeys, monks, and mountains. Zai jian!
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
The six stages of experiencing Spring Festival as a foriegner
Arguably the most important holiday in China is Chinese New Year's, known here as “Spring Festival.” The festival starts on February 6 and lasts until about February 13. I was lucky enough to be in Beijing for this exciting time. Although many of Beijing's inhabitants are migrant workers who return home for the Spring Festival, there were still plenty of Beijingers around to make the Spring Festival an exciting time.
After the Spring Festival, I tried to come to grips with my experience, and decided that I wanted to present it as:
The six stages of Spring Festival, from a foreigner's perspective.
Stage One: Mild amusement
You're awakened by a series of six loud bangs. As you're wondering if you should call the police to report gunshots in your vicinity, ten more loud shots ring out. At this point, luckily your roommate mentions that this is Day One of Spring Festival, and that throughout the next week people will constantly use fireworks. You muse at how strange it is that people are using firecrackers in the middle of the day, but really don't think too much of the occasional bang that rings out.
Stage Two: Awe
As nightfall approaches, the firecrackers become more and more frequent. You start to wonder: who could be lighting this many firecrackers? Then you remember: You're in Beijing China, and there are 15 million people living here plus who-knows-how-many migrant workers.
At about 7pm, you walk outside. There's a faint smell of ash in the air- even though there's no one in sight lighting a firecracker. At this point, judging by the sound, people are setting off an ungodly amount of fireworks. Most people describe being in a Chinese city during Spring Festival like being in a war zone, with people firing guns everywhere and bombs going off. Although this is an okay description, I don't think it does true justice to the sheer frequency of **BANG**s. To me, it sounded more like being inside a microwave as it's simultaneously popping 100 bags of popcorn... for 12 hours.
Now at this point, you're really starting to suspect that this is a whole new culture. It's 7:00PM and people are setting off fireworks like it's 11:59PM on New Year's Eve at Times Square. The fireworks will continue steadily at this alarming rate right until midnight.
Although the sound is probably the most overwhelming part of experiencing Spring Festival in Beijing, the visual experience is fascinating as well. Nonstop fireworks flower in the sky. And although the streets are hardly packed, locals gather here and there in small groups to light firecrackers. Spring Festival is usually a time when Beijingers return home to their families. The normal custom is for families to eat dinner together while watching the CCTV gala television program (4 hours of Chinese music performances and skits). So most of the people in the streets are young waiters and waitresses who have to work through Spring Festival if they want to keep their jobs, or those who perhaps don't have the means to return home, or want to avoid the inconvenience. The young people are mostly happy, but the older ones seem fairly sullen as they set of fireworks. After all, the entire culture of fireworks in China is a little bit different than in the West: we set them off because they look pretty, they set them off because they're supposed to scare off evil spirits.
Stage 3: Slight annoyance
Whoo! It's midnight! Happy New Year! We can all go home now, right? Nope, not in Beijing. In fact, people continued to set off firecrackers until at least 3AM and probably throughout most of the night.
Stage 4: Worry
On the second day of the Spring Festival, you start to notice the nuances of the Spring Festival fireworks practices. That guy across the street lighting off firecracker after firecracker isn't a crazy midget: he's a 10 year-old kid. And the parents are nowhere in sight. You watch Chinese families launch fireworks out of the windows of their apartments. On top of all this, on New Year's Eve in China, apparently cars don't have the right of way: people setting off fireworks do. Meanwhile, firetrucks, ambulances whizz by. And also, the pungent smell of smoke in the air and decreased visibility makes you wonder if Spring Festival fireworks are the real cause of the Beijing's smog.
Stage 5: Frustration, but glee at having experienced a real part of Chinese culture
It's Day 7 of the Spring Festival, and thankfully, the frequency of **BOOMS** had decreased. If Days 1-3 was the Gulf War, Day 4-7 can be compared to a medium-sized conflict between African despots. However, by day 7 the choice of weapons has also changed. On Days 1-3, the firework of choice was the pretty exploding “bianhua,” the kind you're used to seeing at the average Independence Day family barbeque. On Days 4-7, the firework of choice is “ bianpao,” which is essentially a loud BANG with no visual effect. And these fireworks are constantly punctuating your daily life, going off when you least expect it, and helping you understand why so many soldiers return from war develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
Stage 6: Glee
After the final firecrackers rang out on the evening of Day 7, I felt a bit shellshocked, but on the whole pretty glad to have experienced this holiday. Chinese New Year's is no joke- instead of Dick Clark at Times Square, they've got a TV special that a whopping 1.1-1.3 billion Chinese watch every year. And instead of fireworks at midnight, they've got fireworks at midnight, 1am, 2am, and so on, for 7 days. All in all, it was a good way to usher in the Year of the Rat. Hopefully it's the Year of the Rat in name only, and not a sign of creatures who want to inhabit my dorm room.
After the Spring Festival, I tried to come to grips with my experience, and decided that I wanted to present it as:
The six stages of Spring Festival, from a foreigner's perspective.
Stage One: Mild amusement
You're awakened by a series of six loud bangs. As you're wondering if you should call the police to report gunshots in your vicinity, ten more loud shots ring out. At this point, luckily your roommate mentions that this is Day One of Spring Festival, and that throughout the next week people will constantly use fireworks. You muse at how strange it is that people are using firecrackers in the middle of the day, but really don't think too much of the occasional bang that rings out.
Stage Two: Awe
As nightfall approaches, the firecrackers become more and more frequent. You start to wonder: who could be lighting this many firecrackers? Then you remember: You're in Beijing China, and there are 15 million people living here plus who-knows-how-many migrant workers.
At about 7pm, you walk outside. There's a faint smell of ash in the air- even though there's no one in sight lighting a firecracker. At this point, judging by the sound, people are setting off an ungodly amount of fireworks. Most people describe being in a Chinese city during Spring Festival like being in a war zone, with people firing guns everywhere and bombs going off. Although this is an okay description, I don't think it does true justice to the sheer frequency of **BANG**s. To me, it sounded more like being inside a microwave as it's simultaneously popping 100 bags of popcorn... for 12 hours.
Now at this point, you're really starting to suspect that this is a whole new culture. It's 7:00PM and people are setting off fireworks like it's 11:59PM on New Year's Eve at Times Square. The fireworks will continue steadily at this alarming rate right until midnight.
Although the sound is probably the most overwhelming part of experiencing Spring Festival in Beijing, the visual experience is fascinating as well. Nonstop fireworks flower in the sky. And although the streets are hardly packed, locals gather here and there in small groups to light firecrackers. Spring Festival is usually a time when Beijingers return home to their families. The normal custom is for families to eat dinner together while watching the CCTV gala television program (4 hours of Chinese music performances and skits). So most of the people in the streets are young waiters and waitresses who have to work through Spring Festival if they want to keep their jobs, or those who perhaps don't have the means to return home, or want to avoid the inconvenience. The young people are mostly happy, but the older ones seem fairly sullen as they set of fireworks. After all, the entire culture of fireworks in China is a little bit different than in the West: we set them off because they look pretty, they set them off because they're supposed to scare off evil spirits.
Stage 3: Slight annoyance
Whoo! It's midnight! Happy New Year! We can all go home now, right? Nope, not in Beijing. In fact, people continued to set off firecrackers until at least 3AM and probably throughout most of the night.
Stage 4: Worry
On the second day of the Spring Festival, you start to notice the nuances of the Spring Festival fireworks practices. That guy across the street lighting off firecracker after firecracker isn't a crazy midget: he's a 10 year-old kid. And the parents are nowhere in sight. You watch Chinese families launch fireworks out of the windows of their apartments. On top of all this, on New Year's Eve in China, apparently cars don't have the right of way: people setting off fireworks do. Meanwhile, firetrucks, ambulances whizz by. And also, the pungent smell of smoke in the air and decreased visibility makes you wonder if Spring Festival fireworks are the real cause of the Beijing's smog.
Stage 5: Frustration, but glee at having experienced a real part of Chinese culture
It's Day 7 of the Spring Festival, and thankfully, the frequency of **BOOMS** had decreased. If Days 1-3 was the Gulf War, Day 4-7 can be compared to a medium-sized conflict between African despots. However, by day 7 the choice of weapons has also changed. On Days 1-3, the firework of choice was the pretty exploding “bianhua,” the kind you're used to seeing at the average Independence Day family barbeque. On Days 4-7, the firework of choice is “ bianpao,” which is essentially a loud BANG with no visual effect. And these fireworks are constantly punctuating your daily life, going off when you least expect it, and helping you understand why so many soldiers return from war develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
Stage 6: Glee
After the final firecrackers rang out on the evening of Day 7, I felt a bit shellshocked, but on the whole pretty glad to have experienced this holiday. Chinese New Year's is no joke- instead of Dick Clark at Times Square, they've got a TV special that a whopping 1.1-1.3 billion Chinese watch every year. And instead of fireworks at midnight, they've got fireworks at midnight, 1am, 2am, and so on, for 7 days. All in all, it was a good way to usher in the Year of the Rat. Hopefully it's the Year of the Rat in name only, and not a sign of creatures who want to inhabit my dorm room.
Still here!
It's been a busy past couple of weeks, as my teachers continue to assign me massive loads of homework. The good news is that my Chinese is improving a lot, and I'm starting to get used to the grueling workload. For now, this is just a quick update: I'm working on a longer post about the Chinese New Year festivities, which I plan to post in the next 12 hours.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
A day in the life
A day in the life
I got my first impressions of what it’s like to attend a study abroad program when I was a senior in high school. As I was touring various universities, sometimes my college student friend or tour guide would heap praise on his or her university’s study abroad program. Later, I’d ask for more details- they all confided in me that study abroad was like a vacation: less class, optional class, less stringent grading, and lots of fun foreign cultural activities.
Although there are lots of fun foreign cultural activities on the weekends, from Monday to Friday my program does not feel like a vacation. The program is rigorous like the Chinese university experience, where students attend 7 hours of class daily and spend most of the rest of their time studying. So here’s a basic description of my schedule from Monday to Friday.
7:30AM – Class starts at 8AM every morning and lasts until 12PM, so there’s no time to sleep in. Even if I decide to sleep in, my teacher will come to my room and wake me up. That’s right, because the classes here are so small and the classrooms are in the same building, the teachers will gladly come to students’ rooms if it's 8:05AM and they aren't in class.
8:00AM – Dabanke (“big class”, 6 students). Every morning class starts with a dictation that randomly tests about 40 of the previous night’s 80 new vocabulary words. After that, the teacher drills us on grammar for the rest of the hour.
9:00AM – Xiaobanke (“small class”, 3 students). This is the hardest class for me- you have to know the previous night’s 12-13 new grammar patterns pretty well. If you don’t, there’s only two other students, and you have nowhere to hide. Luckily, on the occasion that a grammar pattern is too complicated for me, most of the teachers are understanding and helpful. The workload might be intimidating but at least the teachers aren’t.
9:50AM – Usually after two hours of grammar drills, my head is pounding. I usually take a 15 minute powernap here to regain some energy.
10:10AM – Duihuake (“conversation class”, 2 students). This is my favorite class of the day- it’s me, one other student, and the teacher. The goal of the class is for the students to converse naturally while the teacher corrects their speech. I like this class because every day we discuss a different topic, whether it’s Starbucks in the Forbidden City, what Beijing should do about traffic problems during the Olympics, or problems faced by China’s single child generation. Some of my classmates find some of these topics to be quite boring, but I find that it’s easier to get excited about these issues than it is to get excited about parroting some grammar patterns back to the teacher in Dabanke or Xiaobanke.
11:10AM – I usually have lunch break around this time. Sometimes I grab a quick bite with my roommate and some friends at a nearby restaurant. Other times I speedwalk to the nearest McDonald’s, grab some American food while watching the West coast NBA games.
12:10PM – Danbanke (“one-on-one class”). This class is pretty straightforward. It’s me and the teacher and we work on grammar for an hour.
1:10PM – If I’m feeling energetic after 4 hours of class, it’s usually because I’ve gotten more than 5 hours of sleep the night before. If that’s the case, I’ll probably study for a while and then have a short nap. If that’s not the case, I’ll probably nap for about 90 minutes.
4:00PM – Extracurriculars. My program arranges various extracurricular activities, including Taichi, Calligraphy, Chinese Folk Songs, and Ping Pong. I originally planned to attend Taichi, cooking, Chinese slang, and Ping Pong classes, although now I only have time for cooking and Chinese slang. I’m also on the student council. If I don’t have extracurriculars that day, I’ll go to the gym, lift weights and stretch for a couple of hours.
6:00PM – After meeting up with some classmates at the gym, we grab a quick family-style dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
7:00PM – The fun begins. Every night, I get about 80 new two-character compound vocabulary words to memorize, and I’ll have between 60-120 never-before seen characters to memorize. On top of that, there’s reading and understanding that day’s lesson material. Also, every night there is preparation for conversation class, which usually involves interviewing a Chinese person. Every night we also have written homework, which is translating sentences and reading comprehension. On top of that, once a week, there’s a hand-written three page essay. Two days after I submit the essay, I have to memorize it and present it to the class orally. And on top of all this work, there's various deadlines for a semester-long project that culminates in a 3000 character essay and an oral presentation.
Needless, to say, from 7:00PM until about 2:00AM, I’m doing homework. And I have yet to successfully 100% complete a night of homework so far.
2:00AM – I call it a night. I could keep working and finish my homework, but I think that sleep is more important, because I’ll need the energy for the next day’s class.
-
After re-reading all this, I ask myself: why am I doing all this? At this point, I’m not really sure: I don’t have a big goal on my mind like “become CEO of a Chinese company.” Even “becoming fluent” is such a long way off that I don’t want to think about it. But in some weird way, I enjoy the process of studying Chinese. Every day, it’s mentally challenging to memorize characters and understand the grammar, and it’s psychologically challenging to stay motivated.
But I think it’s more than just the challenge… I also like studying Chinese because it’s very transparent. For example you can’t B.S. knowing how to write a Chinese character- you either know how to write it, or you don’t. Over my previous high school and university experience, I’d get frustrated because the subjectivity of the grading made it impossible to tell if I was actually making positive progress. For example, I’d write an essay that I thought was really good and get a bad grade, or I’d write a bad essay and get a good grade. With this system, it’s hard to know if you’re going in the right direction. It's even harder to know whether you’re getting a good education or whether you’re wasting your time. With studying Chinese, you either understand it or you keep trying- there’s no uncertainty.
And aside from all of that philosophical stuff about why I like to study Chinese, it’s awesome being in Beijing on the weekends. During the days, there are so many touristy/cultural things to do, (much of which I still have to write about and post pictures of) and at night, the bars and clubs are fantastic.
It’s also awesome just being in Asia- today I just (partly) finished planning a backpacking trip that will take me and a couple friends from Beijing to Shanghai to Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong. I can’t wait to explore all the cities, to trek through the jungles of Southeast Asia, and to find hidden beaches in Thailand.
In other news, I won a Light Fellowship for the summer semester, so I’ll definitely be studying here all the way until the Olympics. Thank you again to the Light Fellowship committee for giving me with this opportunity.
I got my first impressions of what it’s like to attend a study abroad program when I was a senior in high school. As I was touring various universities, sometimes my college student friend or tour guide would heap praise on his or her university’s study abroad program. Later, I’d ask for more details- they all confided in me that study abroad was like a vacation: less class, optional class, less stringent grading, and lots of fun foreign cultural activities.
Although there are lots of fun foreign cultural activities on the weekends, from Monday to Friday my program does not feel like a vacation. The program is rigorous like the Chinese university experience, where students attend 7 hours of class daily and spend most of the rest of their time studying. So here’s a basic description of my schedule from Monday to Friday.
7:30AM – Class starts at 8AM every morning and lasts until 12PM, so there’s no time to sleep in. Even if I decide to sleep in, my teacher will come to my room and wake me up. That’s right, because the classes here are so small and the classrooms are in the same building, the teachers will gladly come to students’ rooms if it's 8:05AM and they aren't in class.
8:00AM – Dabanke (“big class”, 6 students). Every morning class starts with a dictation that randomly tests about 40 of the previous night’s 80 new vocabulary words. After that, the teacher drills us on grammar for the rest of the hour.
9:00AM – Xiaobanke (“small class”, 3 students). This is the hardest class for me- you have to know the previous night’s 12-13 new grammar patterns pretty well. If you don’t, there’s only two other students, and you have nowhere to hide. Luckily, on the occasion that a grammar pattern is too complicated for me, most of the teachers are understanding and helpful. The workload might be intimidating but at least the teachers aren’t.
9:50AM – Usually after two hours of grammar drills, my head is pounding. I usually take a 15 minute powernap here to regain some energy.
10:10AM – Duihuake (“conversation class”, 2 students). This is my favorite class of the day- it’s me, one other student, and the teacher. The goal of the class is for the students to converse naturally while the teacher corrects their speech. I like this class because every day we discuss a different topic, whether it’s Starbucks in the Forbidden City, what Beijing should do about traffic problems during the Olympics, or problems faced by China’s single child generation. Some of my classmates find some of these topics to be quite boring, but I find that it’s easier to get excited about these issues than it is to get excited about parroting some grammar patterns back to the teacher in Dabanke or Xiaobanke.
11:10AM – I usually have lunch break around this time. Sometimes I grab a quick bite with my roommate and some friends at a nearby restaurant. Other times I speedwalk to the nearest McDonald’s, grab some American food while watching the West coast NBA games.
12:10PM – Danbanke (“one-on-one class”). This class is pretty straightforward. It’s me and the teacher and we work on grammar for an hour.
1:10PM – If I’m feeling energetic after 4 hours of class, it’s usually because I’ve gotten more than 5 hours of sleep the night before. If that’s the case, I’ll probably study for a while and then have a short nap. If that’s not the case, I’ll probably nap for about 90 minutes.
4:00PM – Extracurriculars. My program arranges various extracurricular activities, including Taichi, Calligraphy, Chinese Folk Songs, and Ping Pong. I originally planned to attend Taichi, cooking, Chinese slang, and Ping Pong classes, although now I only have time for cooking and Chinese slang. I’m also on the student council. If I don’t have extracurriculars that day, I’ll go to the gym, lift weights and stretch for a couple of hours.
6:00PM – After meeting up with some classmates at the gym, we grab a quick family-style dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
7:00PM – The fun begins. Every night, I get about 80 new two-character compound vocabulary words to memorize, and I’ll have between 60-120 never-before seen characters to memorize. On top of that, there’s reading and understanding that day’s lesson material. Also, every night there is preparation for conversation class, which usually involves interviewing a Chinese person. Every night we also have written homework, which is translating sentences and reading comprehension. On top of that, once a week, there’s a hand-written three page essay. Two days after I submit the essay, I have to memorize it and present it to the class orally. And on top of all this work, there's various deadlines for a semester-long project that culminates in a 3000 character essay and an oral presentation.
Needless, to say, from 7:00PM until about 2:00AM, I’m doing homework. And I have yet to successfully 100% complete a night of homework so far.
2:00AM – I call it a night. I could keep working and finish my homework, but I think that sleep is more important, because I’ll need the energy for the next day’s class.
-
After re-reading all this, I ask myself: why am I doing all this? At this point, I’m not really sure: I don’t have a big goal on my mind like “become CEO of a Chinese company.” Even “becoming fluent” is such a long way off that I don’t want to think about it. But in some weird way, I enjoy the process of studying Chinese. Every day, it’s mentally challenging to memorize characters and understand the grammar, and it’s psychologically challenging to stay motivated.
But I think it’s more than just the challenge… I also like studying Chinese because it’s very transparent. For example you can’t B.S. knowing how to write a Chinese character- you either know how to write it, or you don’t. Over my previous high school and university experience, I’d get frustrated because the subjectivity of the grading made it impossible to tell if I was actually making positive progress. For example, I’d write an essay that I thought was really good and get a bad grade, or I’d write a bad essay and get a good grade. With this system, it’s hard to know if you’re going in the right direction. It's even harder to know whether you’re getting a good education or whether you’re wasting your time. With studying Chinese, you either understand it or you keep trying- there’s no uncertainty.
And aside from all of that philosophical stuff about why I like to study Chinese, it’s awesome being in Beijing on the weekends. During the days, there are so many touristy/cultural things to do, (much of which I still have to write about and post pictures of) and at night, the bars and clubs are fantastic.
It’s also awesome just being in Asia- today I just (partly) finished planning a backpacking trip that will take me and a couple friends from Beijing to Shanghai to Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong. I can’t wait to explore all the cities, to trek through the jungles of Southeast Asia, and to find hidden beaches in Thailand.
In other news, I won a Light Fellowship for the summer semester, so I’ll definitely be studying here all the way until the Olympics. Thank you again to the Light Fellowship committee for giving me with this opportunity.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
New friends
One of the best parts of ACC, the program I'm doing, is that it gives you lots of opportunities to find out about life in China by introducing you to lots of Chinese people. First of all, even though most of us live on campus, we're all assigned a Chinese host family. We're encouraged to get to know the host family by visiting their homes and eating meals with them as often as possible.
I met my Chinese host family last Sunday night. There's three people in the family: the father is probably about 60 and has been driving forklifts for the same newspaper company for 30 years. The mother is retired, and I haven't met her because she's been in the southern part of China traveling with friends. There's one 25 year-old son, who graduated university three years ago and has been working for Panasonic for the last 3 years: interestingly enough they're doing lots of technology work for the upcoming Olympics.
I met them at their apartment, which was within walking distance of my dorm. I'd describe the apartment as neat, classy, and filled with lots of expensive electronics. They had a huge Sony TV, Bose speakers, and even a Karaoke system. They had some Chinese art around the room, but what caught my eye was a relatively large replica of New York's famous “Wall Street Bull.” It was about the size of a small TV- hardly a tourist trinket, and definitely an interesting piece for this modest Chinese apartment.
After we drank tea at the apartment, we headed over to a hotpot restaurant for dinner. Hotpot is one of my most favorite culinary discoveries here (although I think they have it in North America)- each person gets a pot of soup that's heated to a boil by a small flame throughout the meal. Then you order plates of thinly sliced raw meat that you toss in the boiling pot and cook fairly quickly (5-10 seconds). Then you take out the cooked meat and dip it in delicious peanut sauce. In typical Chinese generous host fashion, my host family ordered 6 huge plates of beef for the three of us, which we did not even come close to finishing.
During dinner, my host-brother showed me pictures from his visit to the new Olympic stadium- the “bird's nest”- which got me really psyched about being here for the games, and actually even seeing them: my dad and I have got tickets for 5 nights of track and field at the Bird's nest, which I think is going to be fantastic.
Anyways, this post took a little longer to write than I was expecting- I'm going to post what I have now, go to the gym and work out, then come back and write for a while until the Yale-Princeton squash match starts at 12PM EST, 1AM China time.
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