Plans and Preparation

Hello all you wonderful people!  For those in college, how is your summer going?  For those in lower grades, "Ha-ha! Losers!" For those who have jobs and lack the leisure-time to sit down and write blogs, what are you doing? Shouldn't you be working?

In a little over a week, I will be leaving for DC, then Beijing, China to begin my study abroad adventure.  My initial excitement is tempering into a calm anticipation of sorts as the weeks pass and my departure crawls near.  This dampening is not due to aversion to culture shock, the inevitable numerous mis-communications ahead, nor impending traveler's runs.  No, what I dread most is the 14-hour flight--not because I dislike long flights in any particular way or fashion, but rather, am wary of being sardine-packed into a cylindrical, metal tube hurdling through the sky at velocities and heights that laugh in the face of practical thought over a distance that is very much unimaginable.  Also, I might have been lying about disliking long flights.

Seriously, though, they kind of suck.

You're cramped, there's literally no comfortable position to be found (at least in economy), the food is horrifying, you are at risk for deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, and to top it all off, you are constantly getting nuked by cosmic rays.

*If you have any tips for surviving this journey, please tell me in the comments.  I'd really appreciate it.  After doing reading, I'm not completely beyond wrapping myself in a suit of tinfoil.

**On that note, my physics professor this past semester at WVU enlightened me to some interesting research on how jet lag is caused (or at least made worse) by an induced electro-magnetic field created when our bodies interact with the natural magnetic field of the earth.  That feeling often described as "'I want to die'-ness" is basically the result of the polarity of the molecules in our bodies getting jumbled-around like a Nokia cellphone in a blender (my bet on the Nokia phone to win).

That's... that's impossible... (also, caution: mild language toward the end of the clip)

The trials of airplanes aside, I'm pretty freaking pumped.  I can't speak for anyone else, but when I'm embarking on some big, new endeavor, I can't help but try to absorb as much information as possible.  I've been reading and re-reading the student handbook and doing personal research, and have found some interesting things.  Here's a list:

• The typical schedule of language instruction: 20-30+ hours per week

• Students are expected to uphold a strict language policy that permits English only in times of emergency.
• Foreigners often receive stares in less-metropolitan areas because they can be a spectacle (not a problem for me... however)
• Pedestrians are not given the right of way.
• Chinese drivers can be accurately described as "aggressive" compared to Western standards.
• Spitting in public is commonplace (at least up until recent years where it is beginning to be perceived as rude behavior).
• All participants in the CLS program are recommended to bring a supply of condoms from the US whether or not they plan to engage in sexual activity.

...So that's that.  I get to study a language that I'm totally digging at this point in my life in a completely immersed environment.  And while there, I can expect to dodge, not only cars, but renegade loogies as well.  All while being aware of this "sexual activity" I've heard so much about.  If I could take a bunch of people with me, I would.  Sounds like a regular gas.

One last thing.  I'll be living at a home-stay during most of my time in Beijing.  I'm supposed to buy some gifts for the family members who are so graciously affording me housing and meals.  The gifts should obviously not be things easily-obtained in China (we all know the immediate difficulty of that task) and should be representative of our home country or state and/or should be meaningful to me.  So I inquire to you, my dear readers, what should I obtain/purchase for my host family?  Let me know your ideas down below.


I would also love it if you'd subscribe to this little growing work and share it with cool people.  I'm totally open to feedback as well.  Please? Pretty please?  Here's some incentive:

...Please?  Cat in cup gives me 'four-paws-up' so you can scratch his tummy.  Source.

Until then, (I'm off to the beach tomorrow! Woo-hoo!)

Stay in touch and do good work...

-Joseph

Introductions and Impressions

I got it. I really, actually got it. I could kiss someone. I could pinch their chubby cheeks until they kicked me in the shins and I'd still be okay with it. I'm going to Beijing, China to study Mandarin Chinese, the language I've been practicing and learning for three years now--with the US government's help, of course.

After several weeks of calculated fretting and shaping thoughts into those blasted representations of human expression--application essays--I pleasantly discovered that I had been awarded a Critical Language Scholarship.  This award is provided by the US Department of State for the purpose of increasing the number of people who are proficient in a particular, high-need language.

I was so lucky to get one.  I think when I found out, I nearly cracked in half and oozed onto the floor. I might have pee'd myself a bit in reality. Just a little though.

----

My name is Joseph.  I am an all-natural American-born Asian-American conceived and raised in the metropolitan metropolis that is Charleston, West Virginia (the term 'metropolitan' and 'metropolis' are pushed here, but it's still more concrete than most of the state).  I am a college student at the moment, but I'm sure that will change in a number of months, as many things do.  I am a reluctantly-admitting foodie (something I don't think will change in the coming months) and rather enjoy cooking what I can and trying to cook what I cannot.  I find myself doing lots of different, often exciting activities such as parkour and bouldering and fencing, yet wind the pace down with playing music, watching various television programs on the internet, and over-thinking too many things.

I like to think I am a fairly neat person to hang out with.


I am going to be studying at Beijing Language and Culture University in the famed capital of The Middle Kingdom, China.  In a little over a month, I could be chewing on beautiful, bronze, authentic roast duck; its sumptuous drippings rolling down my chin.  I could be sipping expertly-crafted teas--mere miles from the fields where the same leaves were picked.

Look at it.  LOOK AT IT!

I could dance with old people in the park. Because that's a thing. Old people ballroom-dancing like a scene straight out of some vintage movie I've never seen.  Really, the possibilities are vast and exciting and wonderful and... a little overwhelming, to be honest. But it will be so much fun, and so exciting, and so...hot (Beijing's summer is infamous, to say the least).

"Why yes, I do need a napkin." Source.

 Anyway,

I want this blog to be a way I can transmit these experiences I will be having with anyone who wants to read/listen (conventions for conveying mediums of thought are confusing sometimes, right?).  I want it to be a fantastic digital record that can be a little magnified piece of the record that is our human lives.  We are all records, after all--records of love and hate, of pain and of joy, of flights and of failures.  And if my record can add to the leather-bound tome of our human existence, then I'll have left a small footprint that displaced some of the sand on the ever-shifting shores of time (ha. these metaphors can only get better from here...).

I'd like to share with you a little of my record, and perhaps you can share with me a little of yours...  You can expect more writings in the coming months, as well as videos, pictures, and descriptions of food you've only had in dreams that... you've also probably never had.  But I'll change that.

Really, while this blog is being created for the purpose of documenting my time in China, I hope to expound it further in the future--time and interest permitting.  Check back every now and then for updates! The pace will obviously pick up approaching departure (The whole shebang [huh... she-bang... what? she-bang... hard? shuh-bang. strange.] kicks off the about the second week of June 2012).  But who knows? Maybe I'll come across something super-sweet and fantastic that is just dying to have my spin put on it (unlike so many on the internet before me).  Until then,

Keep in touch and do good work.




-Joseph


For legal purposes:
*Any views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of the US Department of State or any other official party pertaining to CLS or participating institutions in any way.