Wrapping things up.

Things are starting to wrap up for this leg of CSP. We leave in 10 days for our travel component, or "trek" as Dr. Jay calls it. We'll be in Xi'an (home to the terracotta soldiers) for almost three weeks. There, we will be taking our Chinese History class (gag) and completing a week long service project in rural Xi'an suburb. I am not sure exactly what we're doing for that yet, but I think it something along the lines of teaching English to kids...One of my friends on the program, Joni, was in Xi'an for about two weeks last summer, working in an orphanage. So I think we'll be able to go and help out for a couple of days (In China, everything is about the people you know. So I wouldn't be able to show up at a random orphanage to help out--they'd never let me because they don't know me. But thanks to Joni, we have contacts). After Xi'an, we take an overnight train to Beijing and will be there for three or four days. Not enough time, if you ask me. Then comes Shanghai for three or four days as well. Finally, we end up back in Xiamen for the last three weeks of our time in China. When everything is so split up, it makes me think that these two months are going to go by rather quickly.

Before we leave, we have to finish up our Chinese class as well as our Contemporary Society class. This morning actually, we had to recite a famous poem in Chinese that we'd memorized. It's a good portion of our Chinese grade. This coming Friday is our final exam. I've lots of characters to memorize for that one. In a week we also have to take our Contemporary Society final. Contemporary Society is a class that has been comprised of different Chinese professors from Xiamen University (Xiada for short) giving us lectures on things ranging from Chinese education, the WTO, special economic zones, to rural reform. I've liked that the professors are constantly switched up, but I don't really know how the exam will look. It's not like Dr. Jay has been attending all the lectures and taking notes along side us...Yesterday, I had my tai chi (actually pronounced tai ji) exam. We've had three weeks of lessons, 5 days a week. Our teacher taught us a routine that anyone who has ever done tai chi knows. It has 24 steps and takes about 5 minutes to perform all the way through. We had to perform it one by one in from of everybody else. And then when you finished your routine, the teacher announced the grade to the class. Can you ever imagine that happening in the States? I don't think so. Tai chi is part of the Dimensions of East Asian Culture class I'm taking. When we get back from our travel component, we will continue to learn about Chinese calligraphy, Chinese medicine, and Chinese cooking. We've already had a couple of Chinese medicine classes, and I am in the process of reading a book on the subject for class. It's been very interesting. There's a lot of merit to Chinese medicine, I'm finding. Next week sometime we are going to an acupuncture clinic. I think it'll be really cool...

Right now, I am sitting in a little cafe with free wifi. I am on a constant quest to find decent coffee, and it isn't going so well. My intern told me that the place I'm at now, Brown Sugar, had some of the better coffee she's had. It's not great, but better than a lot of other places around here. I've run into the same problems here that were in Egypt when in comes to coffee. Lots of instant Nescafe that smells burnt when you add water. And compared to everything else, coffee is pretty expensive. About the same price would pay in the States. Lame. I have found some fantastic fresh juice/smoothie bars. I am loving the kiwi juice. They also have kiwi yogurt here (when you can find dairy). It's like in France with the pear flavored gelato and yogurt. Not something you can find in the States, but a wonderful idea. America needs to branch out when it comes to fruit flavored things...

In other news, I'm trying to figure out my summer plans. It's been stressful to work all that out from China, where I don't have limitless internet time. And I've been feeling pressure to nail things down before I leave on Travel Component--I'm sure I'll be super busy and won't have time for things like job applications. I get back to Xiamen at the beginning of April, which is much to late to start inquiries...

That's all for now, zaijian.