Scavenger Hunt

Saturday was the first of our CET organized weekend activities. All of the CET students participated in a scavenger hunt around the city. We divided into 6 teams of four to see which team could answer the most questions in three hours. My team included Cortne, Andrew, and Laura (Cortne's suitemate who goes to Northwestern). We were more excited about seeing new parts of Harbin than searching for specific items on the scavenger hunt list, so we set out for Zhongyang Dajie in the Daoli district. This pedestrian street is the center of the remaining original Russian architecture of Harbin. Today, it is the main upper class shopping street in Harbin where you can find almost any Western brand. Of course that means that it is also the site of Harbin's only McDonald's location. We just had to stop for some ice cream cones. I never thought I would call McDonald's expensive, but since the prices are standardized around the world, food at McDonald's is quite a bit more expensive than food you can get elsewhere in Harbin, especially for its quality.

Anyway, we walked the length of the street to the Songhua River bank at the end (pictures above) and then decided to take a taxi back because it was about a 40 minute walk there, and for part of it we were walking over this bridge that should not have had a pedestrian sidewalk on it because it was literally an expressway, so we didn't really want to go back on foot. Hailing a cab wasn't too much of a problem; getting the driver to take us back to HIT was. As soon as we said where we wanted to go, the taxi would drive away, so finally we decided to get into the cab before we told the driver where to go. That way he couldn't get rid of us. It worked, and thankfully the second time we went over that treacherous bridge was in a car.

In other news, I would like to comment on some interesting observations I've made in the past week or so. I have found that the Chinese are very welcoming towards foreigners, most of all the middle aged women. When I first moved into the dorm, I wanted to get a key chain for my keys (there's an inner and an outer door to my room), so I went to the chaoshi on campus. It's like any supermarket in America with pretty much anything I would want to buy, except a key chain. I showed a store employee my two keys and attempted to ask for a key chain. She took hers out of her pocket and asked if that was what I wanted. She said they didn't have any in the store, but she took the two keys she had off hers and gave it to me. I was kind of embarrassed because I didn't want to take this woman's key chain, but she insisted so there was nothing I could do. Now almost every time I go into the store (which is more often than you would think), she comes up to me and tries to help me find what I need. She even puts things in my shopping basket that she thinks I might like. I have to discretely take them out before I check out so as not to hurt her feelings.

There's another woman about her age that works at one of the cafeterias on campus. She makes the actual version of what Americans call fried rice. I like to go to her because she makes it right in front of you, so it's hot and you know it hasn't been sitting out for hours. She definitely recognizes me by now. Today, I went to the cafeteria around 10:00. On Mondays, I have an 8:00 class and then I have a break until 2:00. I don't really have time for breakfast, but after going to class I feel like eating lunch food even though it's only 10:00. I heard someone in front of me in line ask for chicken chaofan, and she said that at that time of day she was only making egg chaofan. I figured it was worth a try to ask for spicy beef chaofan myself. I expected her to say no, but she made it for me without any problem. She put it in a plastic bag (no box or anything - at least it cuts down on unnecessary waste!) as they seem to always do here, and I took it back to my dorm to eat and write this blog post.

Harbin Pictures

On Fridays I only have two classes, and they don't start until 2:30pm, so I actually have some time to post. I have been working constantly this past week. Through homework, attending class, and simply keeping my language pledge of only speaking Chinese, I'm completely exhausted.

Last Friday and Saturday we took placement tests, and I think I was placed too high. They decided I should be in the highest level class with students who have had up to five years of Chinese and have lived in China. The workload is one thing, but what's worse is I can't even understand the professor when she gives us an assignment, and I can't ask a classmate in English because of our language pledge. Also, the vocabulary lists in our textbooks don't have English translations. There are only definitions of the words in Chinese. I guess there's not much I can do except wait for my Chinese to improve through being here. They say after the first two weeks, we won't have too many problems, but this is only the fifth day of the language pledge. I feel like I understand what my roommate says to me more and more everyday, which is really cool.

Aside from classes, things are going really well. My roommate He Wei has moved in. He's a big help with little things like getting a meal card, setting up the internet in our room, and fixing the toilet, which constantly overflows unless you turn off the water supply to the bathroom. When you turn on the water to take a shower, you have to flush the toilet every 15 seconds to keep it from overflowing, but they say they're going to fix it today. It seems like things in Dorm No. 6 are starting to settle in for the semester.

Above are some pictures of everyday life in Harbin. From top to bottom (I hope they show up in this order): me and my suitemate Dane in front of Dorm No. 6; Corner Coffee (jiejiao kafei); downtown Harbin; a street vendor selling corn.

I'm keeping a running list of future blog post topics, so bear with me.

Won't be Starvin' in Harbin

Note: This post was written on August 29th, but I just now have internet access to post it.

First of all, I should inform you that if you comment/have commented on my blog posts, I won't be able to read the comments because I cannot access the blogger website from China. I do have access to my email, however, so feel free to contact me at jhg45@georgetown.edu or jarrett.gross@gmail.com.

As many of you know, one of the most important things to me in my everyday life is eating good food, hence my problem with Leo's. Fortunately, from my experience in Harbin so far, the food is wonderful…well most of it at least. In the thousands of years of Chinese history, they don't seem to have figured out breakfast yet. I can't say what I ate this morning at our hotel, but I can say that I didn't eat very much of it. It was a buffet of steamed cabbage, some type of cold noodles, and an extremely dense type of cold bread.

Aside from the breakfast at our hotel, however, the food has been quite good here. My best experiences have been at the small hole in the wall restaurants that I've tried with the other CET students in our first days here. As I mentioned earlier, the noodle place we went to on our first day here was great. The dish I ordered was really spicy; I knew that the last two characters in its name meant "spicy noodles," but I just found out today that the full name was "numbingly spicy noodles." The name was definitely fitting!

Today I discovered a coffee shop about two blocks from our hotel and Dorm 6 with free wireless internet. The coffee and espresso drinks are priced at American prices, but it's such a quaint little place that I see myself spending a lot of time there this year. I'm debating about not even getting internet access in my room and just using it there because the process involved in getting an internet connection in the dorm is incredibly complicated. Anyway, after the coffee shop, I had lunch with a few new friends at a bao place across from our hotel. The mushroom and pork baozi that I had were delicious. I never thought I would say this, but I think it's better than Wow Bao…no escalators with jumping water though.

For dinner today we went to a little restaurant that we had seen yesterday called "California Beef Noodle King" (spelled "Caifornia beef aoodle hing" or something like that under the Chinese characters). I wasn't too hungry, but once again the food was good, especially this dish with eggplant, potatoes, and peppers over rice. The one thing about the food here is that it is all rather similar. I'm hoping I don't get sick of it or it will be a long year.

My classes started yesterday, but I don't have time to write about them right now...I'll keep you posted.

Finally in Harbin

After approximately 60 hours of traveling, I have arrived in Harbin! It's crazy to think that this will be my home away from home for the next two semesters. We are currently staying in a hotel on campus before we move into Dorm No. 6 on Sunday because as foreigners we may be infected with swine flu. Staying in this hotel is clearly an effective way of stopping our spreading the virus. Despite the annoyance of another move, it's good to finally be on the campus that I have seen so many times on Google Maps.

My trip started at O'Hare airport when I boarded my direct flight to Beijing with Andrew and Cortne. I didn't realize at the time how uncomfortable that seat would come to be after about five hours (less than half of the 13 hour flight!). The guy sitting next to me was a student at Colgate headed to Beijing for the semester. He seemed really friendly, and we briefly introduced ourselves. As the plane pulled away from the gate, he popped a few pills from his backpack, but I didn't really think anything of it until a few minutes after we left the ground. He turned to me and said, "I feel like a huge blob in this seat right now...like my brain is a bowl of jelly." I couldn't help but laughing a little, and he went on to say, "I just took three sleeping pills, like the really strong kind." For the rest of the flight he served as a comedic relief from my cramped United Airlines seat because every time I glanced over at him, he was staring straight ahead with a wide-eyed distant look on his face. I guess those sleeping pills weren't very effective.

Clearing customs was no problem despite the heat sensors we walked past to check for swine flu, and CET representatives Connie and Li Yanqiu met us at the airport to take us to the hotel where we would stay for a total of less than 30 hours before catching the overnight train to Harbin. I was exhausted that night and after a group dinner with the other CET students, I went to bed early, which unfortunately caused me to wake up at 5:00am. I thought I would take advantage of my short time in Beijing, and I went outside for a walk, but before I got two blocks away from the hotel, I ran into Andrew on the street who offered me a breakfast sandwich that he had just bought from a street vendor. They consisted of an egg, some type of bean sauce, and some lettuce wrapped in a pancake, and they tasted surprisingly good. Perhaps even more surprisingly, I didn't get sick from eating them.

After a quick orientation meeting, most of our group walked to Tian'anmen Square, which looked a lot closer to the hotel on the little cards the front desk gave us than it actually was, but we got there eventually with many photo opps along the way. By 7:00 we were on our way to the train station and off to Harbin where we arrived at 7:05 this morning.

Connie gave us a nice tour of the campus, and we saw Dorm No. 6 for the first time along with the cafeteria, classroom building, and some other campus buildings. After the tour, a few of us found this little noodle place with absolutely no English or pictures on the menu, which was a cool change from Beijing. The 麻辣面 that I ordered was amazing, and with some dumplings and a bottle of water it added up to just $1. I can see that the only money problem I'm going to have here is breaking my 100RMB bills.

First (and Possibly Last) Post

Although I had originally planned to debut this blog from my room in Dorm No. 6, I recently discovered through my friend Cortne Edmonds' blog (Of Applesauce and Broken Mirrors) that Blog Spot has been made inaccessible in China, at least for the time being. While I may very well be able to post from Harbin, I thought I would notify my few but loyal followers of this development. The life of Dorm No. 6 may be quite a bit shorter than expected. Anyway, while I'm writing this post, I figured that I might as well elaborate on the preparations I have made so far for my trip.

After weeks of checking the mailbox for my officially stamped visa documents to come from China - the Chinese love stamps, especially red ones - I finally received them in the mail and went straight to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago the next day. Dropping off the visa application was rather uneventful, but when I returned to pick up my passport, I had a first-hand Chinese cultural experience. The line was moving slowly, and the Chinese woman at the back seemed to be in a hurry, so she walked up to the window to speed things up. She and the woman behind the counter started yelling at each other in Chinese and as the argument escalated, the woman in line angrily walked out of the room. A few minutes later, she must have realized that the next closest consulate was in New York and that if she wanted whatever documents she had applied for she would have to come back, so she walked in again and went to the end of the line. Meanwhile, no one else in the room seemed to have noticed what had gone on. I assume that that kind of scene is rather common on the streets of Harbin.

Speaking of the streets of Harbin, this summer I have spent a lot of time looking at maps of the city on Google Maps and through Google Image Search. It will take a lot of getting used to since very few of the streets seem to be straight north-south or east-west, but I hope that after two semesters I'll be able to find my way around. It seems like there is a relatively good bus system, and they are putting in a subway line that will have a stop at my university, but I'm not sure when that will be finished. Apparently, there are some tunnels under the city that were constructed during World War II and will become part of the subway. Either way, the university is in the Daoli district, which is the main commercial and shopping district of the city, so I don't think anything will be too far away. That's pretty much all I can gather from the internet. I haven't received any information on my roommates or classes yet, so I'll just have to wait and see what the real Harbin is like.