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For breakfast, I made some Oatmeal for me and the family so they can try some western food. I tried making it close to how it is at home, with some salt, brown sugar (they didn’t have any sugar), raisins, and butter. I guess it was alright.

For lunch, we had some home cooked food. Both Lake and Lisa told me they don’t like to cook. Their parents never taught them how to cook either. Even though, they can make some good food. I observed the cooking process next to their 4.2kW gas range. First they chopped up some vegetables, took some ground pork out of the freezer, and heated the wok. Everyone uses Peanut Oil for cooking here because of the high smoke temperature. Some salt was added to the oil. Lake scrambled an egg with his chopsticks and dumped it into the oil and after 20 seconds, returned the egg to the bowl. Then came some of the vegetables, which were stir fried and then the egg was returned. Some MSG equivalent was added to the wok too. Everything was placed in a bowl. Then a second dish was made with some different vegetables and some pork, same stir-fry process. Then water was added to the same wok and noodles were boiled. Finally, we all got a bowl of noodles and we each moved food from the other dishes to the noodles, mixed, and ate.

Later in the day, I showed Lake and Lisa some of my photos in between all the soap operas they watch all day on TV.

It is the weekend today, so no language class. I ventured into the center of the city myself today. I started at the same Wangfujing shopping street as yesterday. I found this huge bookstore (5 or 6 floors), but not much in English. Then farther down the street I found a really good Foreign Language Bookstore, maybe the best in China. Then I walked parallel to the famed Forbidden City (saving that for later). I entered Jingshan Park, just north of the Forbidden City. This park has an artificial mountain with a good view of the city, except the air was not clear at all today. Afterwards I visited Beihai Park nearby, which had tons of sights in it. Halls, gardens, and monuments filled every corner.

Today I figured out how to type sentences in Chinese. For example, if you have the correct fonts installed: ???. Much easier and faster than writing out by hand. In the evening, the husband in the family, Liu Yang (or we call him “Lake”), took me to see Tiana**en Square (censored in hopes of not getting this site blocked in China) and Wangfujing Street. At the Square, we saw the famous portrait of Mao Zedong, and tried to watch a flag lowering ceremony (as a thousand others were doing). And then Wangfujing Street is home to the largest shopping mall in China. I ate some Korean food there. The dish was served in a hot iron bowl, so it stayed hot and clean. Maybe it was the first time in a while my intestines didn’t have trouble afterward.

My classes are on the 32nd floor of the SOHO building and I have an excellent view of the city from there. Of course there is heavy construction across the street – a new shopping mall. I noticed today what they say is true; there is not a floor 4. And no floor 14 or 24, or even 13. There are some other floors like M1, M2, M3 which I think fill in those gaps. When spoken in Chinese, the word four sounds very similar the word death. So no one wants to rent space on a floor possibly connected to death.

I think the class is getting kind of exhausting. Especially reading and writing Chinese characters is very tough. But I’m here to see for myself how challenging this is. I learned I will probably be the only student in the class for the first three weeks.

The air pollution in China isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Unless you are standing in the middle of the street in heavy traffic, I don’t notice anything. I’m starting to get used to riding the bus and crossing the street to get to the bus stop. Crossing the street can be very strange here. People cross anywhere along the street and they will usually cross halfway and then wait in the very center of the street and then cross the other half when clear. On many of the major roads, fences are put up in the middle of the street to prevent this, but on smaller roads you just have to walk right out there in traffic.

Intersections have even more chaos with people ignoring cross walk signals, bicycles going every direction, and it is a fight between pedestrians and cars to who gets to go first. More times than not, both go. You see 25 people crossing the street and then a turning car tries to plow its way through the people. And then once in a while I see a horse pulling a food cart on a six lane road with skyscrapers nearby. So you have pedestrians, bicycles, tricycles, motorcycles, cars, buses and horse sharing the same road.

Some more information on my home stay:

• Home stay Fee: $528 (includes meals I have with the family)
• Tuition for 5 weeks: $680
• Average cost per day = $35

I have some photos online of the home and the couple I am staying with. The husband, Lake, has a degree in Chemical Engineering and is going to grad school in September for a MBA. The wife, Lisa, has a degree in Computer Engineering and is working in some kind of financial company. And they want to practice English (maybe too much) with me.

I am in a new apartment building that was built last year. It is fairly large too (144m²), with three bedrooms, two baths, located on the 8^th floor. One room is used as a study. There is a two gas burner range in the kitchen, no oven. There is an In-line hot water out on the balcony which must be turned on before using the shower. Almost each room has its own A/C unit (with remote controls), so there is no forced air.

There is construction all around, even more than Shanghai. Opening a window allows you to hear hammers pounding, saws running, and the rest of the sounds of construction. You can hear these sounds 24 hours a day, since somewhere in the distance there is a construction site that never stops. The view out my window is two 20 story apartment buildings being built.

I had my second lesson today and I practice writing some Chinese characters. Before class, I went to Wal-Mart. It is similar to the stores in the USA, except they have live turtles in the food area. I priced some things here:

• Blue Jeans = $5.60
• T-Shirt = $2.60 – $4.00
• Socks = $1.30
• Shoes = $8 – $16
• Milk = $2.40/Gal

You can’t buy anything like a box of macaroni and cheese. They do have a small imported products area with a few different pastas. I just bought some bread or something. They have 62 checkout lanes and I used number 62. Since it is in the middle of the city, it looks like they have a parking lot under the store.

This morning, the family bought some steamed dumplings (baozi) and some kind of soup + tofu (dofu) for breakfast. It is around 32 cents for 10 of these small dumplings. Today I took the bus alone for the first time. It is a 10-15 minute bus ride to the language center when traffic isn’t bad.

I had my first two and a half hour Chinese lesson today with my teacher, Cherry Chen. For the first few days, I am the only student in the class. Then someone else is supposed to join in later this week. Today time was spent on Phonetics, or how to pronounce the sounds. For example, the letter “e” is usually pronounced “uhh.” I’m also trying to memorize numbers between 0 and 10, which would really help when I’m trying to buy things here.

I took the bus back to the apartment afterwards and had some dinner with the family and they practice English for a while. Then I try to get away and go to sleep.

If you want to see where I’m located using Google Earth, I’m staying at 39°55’27.14″N, 116°29’54.95″E. I think the image from Google maybe less a year old, but everything around looks completely different. I am taking classes at 39°54’21.02″N, 116°28’15.50″E.

The train rolled into Beijing Rail Station right on time, 7AM. A huge crowd of people gathered in front of the station, I couldn’t find my contact Jake. I found someone with a phone, pointed to Chinese characters for “Mobile Phone” in my phrasebook and he dialed Jake’s number for me. So then we finally met and we drove to the family’s home. I met the husband and wife and I think they are just a few years older than me. Later I went to see the language center. They told me the center was “right in downtown” and the family lived “very close,” but I don’t know if I would say those things.

Today, my hosts and I went to a supermarket (similar to Wal-Mart), and then a nice Chinese restaurant for lunch. The other side of the deal is this family wants to practice English with me, so they are having many conversations with me. Then they cooked some dinner (some Xian area specialty), and later had some watermelon.

I’ll talk some more about the place later. No proper wireless in this home and the ADSL internet connection is charged by the hour, so kind of strange. Tomorrow is my first day of school. 1:30PM – 4PM I’m going to have some language classes.

Today I’m getting ready to go to Beijing. The train (number Z14) leaves at 7:32PM and arrives at 7AM.

Since I’ve been traveling to so many places for so long now, I’ve calculated a break for a while. About a month ago I found this China Home Stay service which would allow me to stay in one place for a little while. I applied and tomorrow I am going to meet a family and if everything is good, I’m planning on staying in their home in downtown Beijing for about 5 weeks. This will give me time to get used to this country and culture a lot more. I also won’t be on my own as much. I’m also planning on taking some Chinese Mandarin language classes during the day, especially after seeing how much it is needed in the past few days. Perhaps I can learn enough to read some signs or some basic survival communication. At the same time, this will give me some time to plan my next steps.