Seventeenth class level on the second floor of the Russian building

What, you, my dear reader, might be asking yourself, has this Dylan fellow gotten up to over the past month and a half? And why the blast hasn't he written blog posts to keep us up to date on it? 

Or, more likely, you have merely been temporarily deprived of a source of procrastination in your busy lives centered much more on those around you than on that guy half way around the world who has nothing better to do than write pages upon pages of self-idealizing fluff. 

Well, more self-idealizing fluff ahead! Enjoy!

In contrast to last semester when I lived with a host family, this semester finds me living on campus in the international student dorms. While I enjoyed living with my Chinese host family, the convienience and ease of living on campus is undeniable. I am housed in a modern, western-style dorm with a large, clean room, a hall bathroom, and a Japanese roommate. My one  annoyance with the dorm is that people smoke in the halls and the bathroom. 

However, compared to Chinese student dorms, we are living in a palace. Chinese students live with at least three other roommates in a sparce room with electricity turned off before midnight and no showers. There is a separate shower building for students that in my mind makes it a wonder that students shower at all during the freezing Beijing winter. 

My classes have also changed this semester. As opposed to the immersion Chinese classes thirty hours a week of last semester, I am taking about twenty hours of class per week. My classes are still devoted to Chinese learning, but in a more varied context, with twelve hours of pure Chinese language and speaking, four hours of Chinese history taught in Chinese, and four hours of newspaper and magazine reading in Chinese. The result is a busy, but managable week that keeps me learning Chinese at a good pace. In comparison to last semester, however, I have all the free time in the world. 

So, you may ask, what have I been doing in all my free time? A myriad of activities. 

I started a discussion group with Chinese, Japanese, and American students to discuss tensions between the countries and cultural differences and similarities. 

I turned twenty-one and went out with friends to celebrate the momentous age that was much less consequential for my being in China. At midnight on my birthday, I found myself suddenly cognizant of all the secrets of the universe, which was pretty exciting until I forgot it all due to the aforementioned celebrating. 

I started playing chess with a British classmate, and am usually crushed as my tactics so effective in elementary school fail to realize the potential I had thought them capable of. 

I bought a very manly electric scooter. 

I went to the melancholy Beijing Zoo and the magnificent Beijing Aquarium. 

I began reading the Life of Pi in Chinese. I am now at page 5. 

I tried not to breath beneath skies clouded by pollution.

I wrote an Honors Thesis Proposal and, using a contraption forged from my desk lamp, iPod, computer, and twine, recorded a video to try to earn money to fund my research over the summer. 

I started going to the gym.

I cooked Chinese food with one of my teachers from last semester. 

I chose classes for my final fall semester at William & Mary. Scuba diving and a lot of international relations classes, here I come! My mom unsuccessfully tried to convince me that an art class would be cooler than a seminar on national security decision making.

In short, I have kept myself busy. As I encounter new advintures and happenings over my last three months in China, I will endeavor to write more specific and exciting stories, as well as recounting the rythm of everyday life.

Traffic not for the faint of heart 

My room this semester

 We got a late snow that was beautiful and then melted by the end of the day

 Weiminghu (Unnamed) Lake on the Beida campus on one of the first warm days of the year

 My friend Stephen and I posing with my new scooter 

See how cool, purple, and manly it is?!

Beida as the cherry blossoms come out

Taking a chance to relax after one exam to enjoy the weather and study for my next exam 

 The leaves on a lot of plants around Beijing are brownish and dead looking by what I think is an effect of the pollution

 Duck and sausages sold in the grocery section of the French supermarket chain Carrefour

A huge variety of delicious mushrooms and vegetables

As well as dozens of types of tea

 

The jellyfish in the aquarium were some of the most beautiful and undoubtedly the most photogenic creatures there

 The lighting made them ghostly and fantastic

 An escalator going through one of the fish tanks. So cool!

Some cool fish along with a Chinese man who cared not a whit about the signs saying "no climbing" to his right