It's harder for me to write about places when I'm living in them

It's difficult for me to pick out which parts of my day are important to my life and which simply happen.

There is a constant flow of traffic outside our dorm window. Beijing West Road (北京西路) is not the busiest street in Nanjing, but it’s busy enough. We’re not too far from downtown here. There is a 28 story building (if I counted right) across the street from us, though it, like many buildings including our dorm, has a terrace a couple of floors up to provide more space for growing things and being outside.

The streets are lined with trees. So much so that it’s hard to see what’s going on. As I told my brother yesterday, there is Something that drives by multiple times a day chiming the same four-tone tune over and over again, and it has become the Great White Whale of my dorm experience. It haunts my days and my dreams, and I cannot see the street clearly enough to be sure of what it is. Often, this sound is accompanied by a water-spraying, street-cleaning truck, but whether the sound and truck go together by design or coincidence is yet to be determined.

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center is centered around a courtyard. The cafeteria, some offices, fitness center, and dorm floors are wings of the west building, and administration, classrooms, and the large auditorium are in the east building. There is a goldfish (金鱼 ) pond in the courtyard, surrounded by benches and flanked by a couple of small lawns. My roommate, Xiaoxuan, and I have thus far not been able to find fish food in our supermarket, but I’ve located another market and will be trying again soon. The fish will, one day, know me as their friend.

I am taking four classes: three in Chinese and one in English. They changed a little from what I’d decided on when I first looked at the class list, and I’m very happy with what I’ve ended up with. I’m taking 当代国际政治 （Contemporary International Politics), 人类学与中国研究 （Anthropology and Chinese Studies), 中国民法 (Chinese Civil Law), and Environmental Economics (环境经济)。 I’ve been struggling through readings (I have yet to truly finish something) and at first hardly understood anything my professors were saying. Mostly, I have been making huge vocabulary lists from each of my Chinese readings, and these have been helping me to read a little more (it is already possible for me to sometime read a sentence or two of an academic essay without having to use a dictionary). My professors’ lectures have also been shifting from frighteningly mysterious, speech-like puzzles in which I was proud to pick out words, to something like cohesive presentations. I definitely cannot yet understand everything they say, and often struggle to keep up, but I have been able to at least follow the overall flow of ideas in all my classes this week. It is possible that I will pass my classes. This is a relief.

My classmates are awesome. We come from a pretty wide range of backgrounds, but everyone here is really dedicated, not just to language, but to building ties between China and the US (or wherever, not all the internationals are American) and finding constructive ways to working in/between countries.

One of our Chinese colleagues informed my roommate and I at the end of Orientation that we were 窄女， or women who stay inside, because neither of us like to party or spend much time in bars. I think we’re just good roommates. I should say, so that you don’t think that he was just very rude, that this same young man also told me that my future was bright and full of possibility. My interests are wide and varied, and the fact that I speak Chinese and have taken engineering classes (be they only four or five in number) impressed him greatly. I’ve since made it clear that I have a boyfriend already, and I think (hope) that I did so tactfully enough that we are still friends.

I have been meaning to take pictures of the cafeteria food. It’s very cheap, and made of very good quality ingredients. It is, however, still cafeteria food, and thus very boring to eat.

There are a lot of excellent little restaurants and food vendors very close to the Center. Two classmates (one from the southern US, the other from France) showed Xiaoxuan and I a cheap little dumpling （饺子）joint about five minutes from our front gate, and yesterday we ourselves discovered a little noodle/hotpot-ish place one more street away. I already have a favorite little bakery where I buy my red bean-filled mooncakes and other snacks.

Last weekend a couple of US classmates had birthdays, so they arranged to go out for KTV (or K歌， or Karaoke). It was the first time I’d gone, and it was a lot of fun. I can’t really sing any Chinese songs yet, but one of Xiaoxuan’s friends knew that I could sing “Hey Jude” because I’d joined in when she was singing it to herself once, so she had me sing that.

I had heard Beijing Welcomes You, which was made for the Olympics last year. If you haven’t seen/heard it yet, I recommend it.

My favorite song was: 我不是黄蓉。 I think y’all will be able to follow this link, but let me know if it doesn’t work (or: if you’re upset that it doesn’t work. Perhaps you are indifferent to my tastes in Chinese pop music. I shouldn’t assume).
Xiaoxuan and I are, of course, constantly teaching each other language. We are also having a long-term competition over whose language is better. So far, Chinese is winning for being able to express a lot of things much more simply than English. For example, NiXing 逆行 has to be translated into “walking against the current,” and what’s worse: the word Tang 烫 single-handedly describes “unbearably hot food or soup.” So if you think of any particularly elegant or useful English phrases that I could use in this battle, please send them along.

ALSO. I just met a dude in my Environmental Economics class who is interested in working in environmental policy/education/who knows. The point is: so am I. There is someone else here who is definitely not going into the business/finance world, and I am super stoked about it (stoked being a rather technical term for “excited.” Sorry if I left you behind on that one).

My favorite fruits are almost exactly Clementine oranges, except their peels are green and mottled instead of orange. They are called juse (橘色）and they are delicious.

Okay. That's what I have for Random Thoughts on My Life for today. Love from China! I hope you are all well and happy!