Adventures in Guangzhou!

The past week has pretty much been more of the same and I'm still unsure of how much I'm retaining from this experience. I get approximately forty new words everyday and I really do think it's impossible to fully learn all of them in a single night. The textbooks are set up in order to have as much repeat exposure as possible, yet when we keep moving through new chapters all the time, it's tough. My apartment is now full of various textbooks opened up to different exercises and readings. Surrounding the books are mountains of flashcards separated into three piles: "Don't Know," "Definitely Know," & "Questionable." The Definitely Know pile grows everyday, but unfortunately so do the other two.

I have mixed feelings about the overall quality of my program, but I have to say that I am pleased on a few levels. First, I don't have a single class larger than 4 students. That's definitely an ideal way to learn--not small enough to feel like you're under a microscope every second, but not big enough to feel like I'm not getting any attention. Second, the name World Link is definitely not a misnomer. Though there are certainly a huge chunk of students from the states, my circle of friends here includes one Englishman, one Chilean, two Germans, one Canadian, one guy from Switzerland, and one American. My class consists of one Englishman and two Japanese. Needless to say, we have some pretty interesting conversations.

Besides the classwork, I have been playing a whole bunch of football. I was super proud of myself for bargaining down a pair of indoor-style cleats from 400 to 70. However it came back to bite me as I got two major blisters from the shoes. I hate playing with blisters but that's just the way it goes. We have been playing an Americas team vs. Europe and have had some heated competition. We got embarrased once but have split our other matches. I think it's high time we challenge them in basketball but they seem reluctant. Oh well.

And on the subject of football, I went to my first China pro game last weekend as Beijing downed Shenzhen 2-0. It was definitely an interesting experience. Not knowing what to expect, I tried to prepare myself for anything. The night started off with a serious trek out to the western edge of Beijing as their usual home stadium is currently under renovation for the olympics (along with just about everything else). Once we finally got there, we found a small, yet spirited crowd cheering on their boys. There was a complete lack of beer but yet an abundance of police waiting to pounce on any hooligans. Professional sports without beer? It took a little getting used to.

The game itself was... interesting. I'm somewhat confident that my intramural team from college could have competed decently well with them but it was still fun. We had a field day in the stands trying to decipher the various trash talking. The most common imprecation was repeated over and over to the point that we felt like suggesting something new to the crowd. We kept hearing "Sha Bi! Sha Bi!" which, when spoken in the right tones, is a derogatory term for female genitalia. I guess sports fans around the world are always that classy.

Besides the soccer game, I also got out of my apartment for a few other occasions. First, I got to see my buddy play some music at a small bar near the Forbidden City. I'm not quite sure what it is, but recorded music just pales in comparison to live music. It must have something to do with the timbre of the sound waves and the vibrations, but it's so much more exciting to see someone play live. He played a set of just acoustic punk rock and it was awesome. The next morning I got up bright and early and headed out to Tian Tan, the Temple of Heaven.

The temple is interesting for having such cool architecture, but it's also interesting from a historian's point of view. This enormous complex was built back in 1420 for the emperor to pray only twice a year. Meanwhile, nobody else was ever allowed to enter--even when the emperor was there praying for the harvest. Talk about a waste of space! I can't even fathom the time and money that went into constructing and maintaining the temple for what amounted to about an hour of face time every year. Unbelievable.

Other than that, the beat goes on. There are only about 300 characters waiting for me on the table right now...