A Few Random Things

1. Harbin happens to be experiencing its hottest summer in history. When I applied to this program, I was under the impression that Harbin is consistently 70 degrees without and not humid during the summer. Yet after having one of its coldest winters ever, the city has been in the high 90's for the past week, pushing past 100 this past weekend. Harbin has been hotter than Beijing this summer, which doesn't really make any sense... And no air conditioning in my room. I guess I'd take 100 over -30, which is what Harbin hits in the winter.

2. I've had many encounters with Harbin Institute of Technology students (many while playing basketball) in which the student assumed I was also an HIT student. I was initially kind of confused why they would make that assumption. While I've seen other foreigners here, I assumed they were on language programs similar to mine (there were many other language programs at the university I studied at last summer). Bad assumption. HIT actually does have a fairly large foreign student population. Students from around the world (Russia, Korea, all over Africa, and I even met one from Yemen) come to Harbin, many on government scholarships, study Chinese for a year here, then become full-fledged HIT students. Learning Chinese is hard enough. Taking college courses in Chinese? I can't imagine what that is like for the foreign students. I asked my roommate about it, and he said none of the foreign students can really keep up with everything in class. They all go to the professor for help. He added that it's ok because the Chinese students don't understand what the professor is talking about either (because the material is hard...)

3. I had one of the strangest and most fun meals of my life last week. One of the Chinese roommates suggested a 串儿 (chuar - meat skewer) restaurant. When we (4 Americans, 4 Chinese) arrived, there were no open tables. No problem. The manager told us to go outside. As we were waiting, a few of the waiters pulled out some old, dilapidated pieces of wood and set up a table out in the middle of the street. We proceeded to eat probably around 300 skewers as a constant stream of people walked by, staring at us, puzzled to see a table out in the middle of the street, especially given the racial makeup of the table. The meal was unfortunately tarnished when someone walked out of the restaurant and vomited while walking by our table. Nonetheless, a fun experience.

4. I had to give an oral presentation on the recent U.S. financial bill in my business Chinese class this morning. To my surprise, CET's academic director decided to sit in on our class. Fun.

5. Pictures from leaving Shanghai to the beginning of CET:

http://picasaweb.google.com/LouisGilbert15