I'm a tourist

So it's been a while since I've written in here - studying abroad is too full of fun! This past weekend was probably the most tourist-filled (and exhausting) weekend I've had since I got to Beijing. Our teachers decided to be really nice and cancel our test this past Friday, and took us to the park to play Chinese games like little kids. It felt like elementary school recess, China style - we played with jianzi, which is a small feathery thing that you kick around, and also learned some cheesy kid songs. This is a picture of my class in the park:


Last week, I started private erhu lessons with another friend at CET! It's similar to viola in many ways, so it was actually easier than I thought to play a recognizable melody. The hardest part is probably using the bow and holding the instrument on my lap instead of my shoulder. Because we're actually going through with the lessons, we decided to go buy erhu's last week at Xinjiekou, which is a huge area full of music shops with both Chinese and Western instruments, and of course my nerdy musical self immediately fell in love with the place. It was quite a humbling (but exciting) experience to buy the erhu, as I really wasn't sure how to pick out a good instrument and was guessing my way through the entire process. In the end we found a shop with really nice Chinese instruments and they were really helpful with picking out a high-quality, affordable instrument. If you look in the picture, the guy in the background is tuning up the erhu I bought. The wall on the left is full of guzhens, another traditional instrument, and the wall on the right is all erhus.


Friday night CET took us to see Chinese acrobats (zaji) on the other side of town. The performances were all amazing and almost not human - no wonder China's Olympic gymnastic team is so good! The scariest part was that all the performers were really young, probably ranging from 6-18 years old. The girl in this picture is BITING on the stick and balancing her whole body with her teeth. I don't even know how they think of these maneuvers!


On Saturday, my roomate brought me and some of my friends to the Forbidden City. I've been there twice before, but this time it was especially fun because she has some friends who happen to be tour guides there and were able to take us around and give us a backroad version tour of the Forbidden City. I never cease to be in love with this place everytime I visit.


Ellis, Annetta, and I decided to pose with Mao's picture like the tourists we are, and of course what could we do except pretend to be Charlie's Angels:


On Sunday, we decided to go to Beihai Park to go paddleboating. This might have been the first actual sunny and warm day all semester, which just made the park even more beautiful. The park was very crowded with locals, and some of them were painting Chinese characters on the ground with huge brushes and water. Pretty cool!



Yesterday, I discovered that I have the hidden talent of playing BADMINTON! Any of you who know me well know that I am hopeless at any sport that involves a ball or other people. For some reason though, yesterday afternoon I decided to be brave and go with some friends to try playing badminton at a nearby gym, and I could actually continuously hit the birdie back and forth! It was amazing (and fun), and now I have one more way to exercise!

Tomorrow CET is taking its first weekend trip to Anyang, which is a town that's about 6 hours away by train. I'm not quite sure what to expect - I think it's famous for having oracle bones, and we're also going to spend some time climbing mountains. I'll update about it when I get back, wo ai ni men!