T minus 9 days and counting
Well, I'm back on Long Island for the time being, and enjoying the vegetative atmosphere (both literally and figuratively: in addition to vegging out on the couch watching Law and Order, I also communed with nature today when my family took a trip out east to the Peconic River Herb Farm, which was gorgeous as usual). Right now in New York it is 4:35 pm on Sunday the 4th, while in Beijing it is already 4:35 am on Monday the 5th. According to my expert calculations, this means that Beijing is exactly 12 hours ahead of us here in the Eastern Standard Time Zone. This spells some serious jet lag, but at least I'll have a little bit of time to recuperate and sleep and whatnot before I have to move into the dorms and start my all-Chinese-all-the-time immersion. Eep!
My schedule for the summer is as follows:
Present-June 12th. Loaf around Miller Place, study a little Chinese and GRE stuff, engage in desultory packing, but mostly just space out and have fun.
Monday, June 12th. Frantic, frantic packing. (Also: Happy birthday Valeria!)
Tuesday, June 13th, 4:30 pm (EST). Depart JFK Airport. (Flight: 16.5 hours nonstop)
Wednesday, June 14th, 6:00 pm (PRC). Arrive Beijing Airport, meet Sara!
June 14th-June16th. Stay in Sara's apartment, sleep, see the city. Whee!
Friday, June 16th. Dorms at Beijing Yuyuan Wenhua Daxue (Beijing Language and Culture University) open. I will move in on this day.
Saturday, June 17th. Orientation. At this point, I am still allowed to speak English.
Sunday, June 18th. Placement test, Language Pledge, all that fun stuff. The program begins!
June 19th-July 14th. Business as usual.
Saturday, July 15th. KEVIN COMES TO BEJING!! Happiness ensues.
July 17th-21st. This is the week of "Field Work" or "Social Study," which I will ostensibly spend studying Beijing's art and architecture, but actually will be devoted to seeing the sights of Beijing with Kevin and ditching everyone else as much as possible.
Wednesday, July 19th. Kevin leaves. Great sadness.
July 21st-August 17th. Business as usual again.
Friday, August 18th. Last day of classes!! This is sad also, although it will be nice to go home.
Saturday, August 19th. Frantic packing commences; I will wonder how on earth I've managed to accumulate so much stuff in just nine weeks.
Sunday, August 20th, 1:00 pm (PRC). Depart Beijing Airport. (Flight: 16.5 hours nonstop).
Sunday, August 20th, 2:30 pm (EST). Arrive JFK Airport, meet family!!! I am home at last.
August 20th-September 15th. Soak up the family presence and American ambiance; hope that I can still speak English. Begin studying for the GRE (oh, no!) and applying to graduate school.
Friday, September 15th. Back to school in Cambridge. Summer ends at last.
That is the general plan for the summer months: probably a bit more fun than last summer (working INSANE [but somewhat fun, in a vaguely maochistic way] hours in Cambridge at Let's Go) and wayyyy more fun than the summer before that (working two hours away from home in Long Island at Eduware, educational software company of doom). The culture immersion will doubtless be amazing, although the workload is pretty intense too, from what I've heard. Each day of class at HBA begins at 8:00 am with two hours of lecture, two hours of drill session, 45-minute individual sessions in the afternoon, and office hours in the evening. When I'm going to get to the Beijing Library to do research for the paper I'm being funded to write is very unclear. Please please please let them have the books I need in English!!
I'm a little worried about the food in China, as I border on emetophobia in my attitude toward puking (whether in self or others) and apparently this is pretty inevitable. Also, I have heard very very mixed things about the availability of vegetarian food there, so this is an added concern. I think I'm just going to have to accept the inevitability of some unpleasant food experiences and just grin and bear it. I was really put off, though, by the attitude of this one lady who was running the mandatory "East Asia Study Abroad" meeting I had to go to at school -- when asked about traveler's diarrhea (ew, I feel gross even writing it) and other concerns she blew it off, saying first that it didn't happen too much, and then that "it's great, you'll just lose weight and be healthy!" Um, last time I checked, losing weight because you are puking and starving wasn't exactly healthy. Seriously, who hired this woman?
Anyway, I'm sure I'll be fine. I'm more excited about things I need to learn, do, and get while I'm in China. I'll be visiting a host family on a few weekends (I think) so I'm bringing some Harvard and New York memorabilia as a thank-you gift, which I'm told is usually a big hit. I also really want to study Tai Chi and calligraphy while I'm there. I also have been commissioned (along with Sara) to purchase furnishings for our amazing room in Adams next year, and I plan to pick up (1) rainboots, (2) a North Face jacket, (3) some pretty scarves, and (5) a jade bracelet to match my necklace, at some of the markets they have. SO EXCITED!!
Right now, I'm trying to juggle a bit of GRE prep with cramming on "Survival Vocabulary" from the HBA handbook, and my brain is going a little crazy from the sudden innundation of new words in both languages. I've made flashcards of all the Chinese vocab and I have a sheet of 65 fun new vocab words (inveigle? chary? obfuscate? quotidian? penury? okay, I do know what the last three mean at least) for the GRE, but it's not the most gripping stuff. Frankly, I'd rather watch Much Ado About Nothing, which is what I plan to do tonight.
Whoops, dinner's ready. I'm off!
posted by Kelly @ 4:36 上午
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