A week of birthdays OR scavenger hunt adventures

My first week in Harbin has officially come to a close, and because I have delayed posting for so long, we are well into the second week of classes.  Since, “I was busy” is not an acceptable excuse, I will not attempt to provide one. Let’s just say that CET Harbin prides itself on its homework load. For those of you who are not too familiar with Chinese geography, here’s our lovely map!

We took our language pledge the Sunday before classes and later found out that they had published an article about it in the college’s newspaper/ on their website. Interested parties can check it out here:

http://today.hit.edu.cn/news/2012/09-05/3883159090RL0.htm

For people who can’t read Chinese, it’s still cool to look at the pictures they took (you can see part of my head!) and they explicitly mentioned Grinnell College along with Yale as institutions that had students in the CET program.

The CET program is pretty cool and all students end up learning about a variety of different subjects no matter what your language level is.  Everyone is in a one on two drill class where we work on pronunciation with a teacher and one other student, and there is also a mandatory one on one class in which you research and learn about a specific topic that you have expressed interest in. Mine is about middle school students’ mental health, which will tie in nicely when I start Fulbright research in January. Aside from these two classes you also take two electives. I am taking Chinese modern literature and a newspaper reading class. The newspaper class is definitely harder.

Classes aside, everyone also spent this first week attempting to get to know each other with varying language abilities. The fact that three students had birthdays (and small parities to boot) in that time helped quite a bit, and I now recognize pretty much all of the American students, if not their Chinese roommates. To help us acclimate to the surrounding area, CET arranged a scavenger hunt for our first weekend activity. It was a BLAST! The questions ranged from “Who’s calligraphy was used as a model for the school’s name on the front gate?” to “purchase and bring back a pair of fake eyelashes.” Some other interesting questions included: Where can you purchase a leather Russian style winter hat? How do you ask a cab driver to use the meter? and Find a chicken foot and bring it back; 5 extra points for every member of your team that takes a bite.

We had to find someone who was not from the local province: Heilongjiang

One of the questions asked us to eat lamb kabobs in tango pose.

We had to get a photo of a team member feeding an animal. We managed to find a donkey!

Streets of Harbin, searching for the Sophia Chapel.

Found it!

Group photo.

A bar we had to find.

We had to take a picture with a Wal Mart employee, but when we asked, they said it was against company policy for employees to be photographed....

But not everyone has been coping as well. I think the language pledge has hit my roommate especially hard; she’s often homesick. To brighten her spirits, I gave her a cute little present with an encouraging note and received this in return. It made me really happy.

 

Random picture time!

Grape and peach flavored Oreos. They don't taste very good.

Our walls are covered with these interesting stickers. I decided to pose like them.

There's clearly a likeness

Some delicious dried lemon slices with honey that I use with hot water.  They smell amazing, and I know Michelle would really love them.