New Blog

See my current blog at aliaeb.wordpress.com

A quick rundown...

Hello there everybody.

 

Sorry about that sudden posting hiatus. I've been adjusting to the excitement of living in a foreign country. I have some images (actually, a lot) here, but I can't view my blog right now (only post to it), so forgive me if they're poorly arranged. Hopefully the following posts will be more interesting, but here's what's going on:

 

What I eat: I usually eat in the cafeteria - it's a good place to struggle with not speaking the same language as your food. I usually have a couple baozi (deliciously stuffed steamed buns) for breakfast, maybe some sweet, soupy rice stuff. I'm still struggling to come up with a good lunch routine, but dinner is amazing so long as you don't order the food that comes out on the metal trays. The restaurants out here are great too. Of course everyone loves "Peking Roasted Duck", but right now my favorite dish is spicy Xinjiang noodles. This culinary delight comes from China's predominantly Muslim, northwestern province. Lamb, bell pepper, tomatoes and onions go on top of these awesome chewy noodles...oh god, my mouth is watering. Best part: If I eat in the cafeteria, I can do so on a dollar a day. If I go out, three dollars a day.

 

My friends: There's Justin, of course (see prior post). There's a half-chinese girl from Iowa named Elysia (she loves shopping and noodles, just like me). There are amazing Korean people all over the place (I need to learn Korean - the food is great), some cool Japanese kids. Occasionally I party with my Korean and Japanese classmates - it's a good way to practice Chinese (they don't really speak English). There are also a bunch of awesome fun people down on the 8th floor (I live on the 15th), they're with a program called CET.

 

My dorm: is something of a hotel. I have a nice roommate (Aileen, from the Phillipines), we have our own bathroom (western style), a computer, tv, phone, magical water heating pot, and a woman who comes in to make our beds and clean the place (we usually make theds first so that she won't - I feel too spoiled here!) The pictures I've posted are of the view of my dorm block from a nearby pedestrian bridge, a typical room (very clean, very new), and the view from my bedroom window (on a bad smog day - I promise prettier ones later)

 

All right, that's enough tedium for now. I love Beijing, and can't wait to write something interesting about it tomorrow.

Oh yes...

This is what coolness looks like in China.

Here in China

Sorry for the delay in posts everyone. I finally have consistent internet access, but I'm going to put you on hold for a couple more days, because I don't want to give you posts without pictures!

Fan-Fiction and my Fondness for Fuller*

My Aunt wrote 330 pages of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea fan-fiction. Fortunately she's not a bad writer. Her story's actually engaging and entertaining. I just finished editing her torture chapters. Admiral Nelson is a brave soul, I tell ya. But yeah, editing brings me serious joy - all of my anal retentiveness with regard to grammar, use of idiomatic expressions, and the simple aesthetic flow of words has finally found a productive mode of expression. Maybe now I won't have to holler at signs that say things like: 2 taco's just one dollar. Augh...

Right, well, besides that, sharpening my ability to break down and rearrange sentences has got to be helpful somehow when I return to translating literary/classical Chinese. *sigh* I miss it so badly!!! Oh gracefully tedious Fuller drills, Oh Pulleyblank, Oh Matthews, why ever did I leave you in Portland?!

*Contrary to what the title of this post may suggest, my fondness for Fuller's literary Chinese translation exercises has not inspired me to produce any Fuller 'fan-fiction' (of course, his textbook isn't fiction, so I suppose that would be impossible).

Sad About Penguin Love

Tonight the entire family (Me, Dad, Sinead, Uncle Chris and Aunt Becky) went to see The March of the Penguins. Morgan Freeman narrated the difficulties of their Arctic journeying very sympathetically. I cried. I didn't cry at the dead baby penguins, though (well, not more than once; and there were like, five opportunities to cry at dead baby penguins). I can deal with sad moments, especially those involving explicable things like death. I cried the hardest when the penguin found its mate, and they appeared to have fallen in love. Something as happy and inexplicable as that is bound to make me feel sad. I came home and ate some tapioca, half a salmon patty, and four spinach nuggets. Now I'll probably be fat, and I still don't feel better! If only those penguins hadn't been so unfathomably tender with one another, I might be happy right now.

Leather Bags & Foreign Caffeine

This is the fantastically exciting new purse that my papa got me for China! It's so big that I can fit who knows how many wonderful Chinese goodies in it, and have room leftover for my camera, chinese-english dictionary, etc. Oh Joy!

By the way, I went out to Greek food with my Aunt Becky and our friend Bonnie today, and encountered the most scrumptious thing I've discovered since Vietnamese-style coffee: Greek coffee. Oh Lord - three espresso cups of pure goodness. A trip to the Mediterranean, anyone?

Preserved Duck Eggs - Good For You!

I really was looking forward to trying these for a long time. My dad took this photo of Rob and I right as we first bit into our duck egg halves. Our faces pretty much say it all. But hey, there were several boxes of them in the Asian market, so someone must really like them! After this, my other family members refused to let the box of four remaining eggs stay in the house, let alone the fridge. They could have at least tried them! They were definitely worth trying! Despite my facial expresion to the right, I highly recommend the experience.