Ok so, I realize this blog sucks. I really do not have a lot of free time, because I have to learn between 40 and 60 new Chinese characters a day. I am going to try to put up some of my photos as soon as I figure out how to. So far what I've learned about China is:
The food is awesome.
Everything is really cheap.
The bathrooms are kind of gross (more on this later)
The people are extremely nice.
Chinese is hard.
I wish I had brought a spare pair of shoes, because my sneakers got wet and it took me a while to get them dry. I am still to afraid to go anywhere by myself, because my Chinese is not that good, and I have no idea where I am. I tried to go wander around the city today, but I forgot where the metro was, so I just went to a store I had already been to, and then walked home. I firmly resolve to see new and interesting things this weekend.
Last week during our orientation we were
privileged enough to have performers come to
BIE (Beijing
Institute of Education. where
CET is hosted in Beijing) and perform traditional Beijing street performances. they were all very interesting:
This guy played something like a
Chinese version of
castanets. He spoke/sang very quickly at the same time.
This man made small
sculptures out of dough (yes, like play-
doh but much cooler) Pictured here is one of the mascots for the Olympics which will be here this summer.
This woman
performed magic tricks completely silently. They were low tech but I still don't know how she did them.
This guy was so chill. he sat at the other end of the room and painted kites that look like this:
By hand people! Amazing!
This girl was doing amazing feats on that yo-yo you see. I don't know if it has a special name, but it was very exciting to watch.
Ok so all the performers were pretty amazing, but this guy I think was the most popular, just because none of us had ever seen anything like it. He takes sugar and melts it into caramel and then blows it up with air and paints it to create beautiful animals. Beautiful
EDIBLE animals (I know, they're so pretty why eat them, but they are made of sugar and melt, so its better not to waste it) Did I mention he does this in a matter of seconds. Here you can see the finished product:
Amazing, right?? if you want to see more of the stuff he or any of the performers did you can just click on one of the pictures and browse through my Beijing set.
All and all it was an amazing night, and each one of the performers made an effort to include us in their craft. Even with the language
barrier we all learned a lot. And there was free food. Need I say more? Also if anybody wants to give me new adjectives so I can stop saying "amazing!", feel free.