Hello, blog readers! Or reader, as the case may be, since I seem to have only one follower, the wonderful Daniel Thompson.
As you probably already know if you're reading this, this blog will document my upcoming two-month stay in Beijing. I'll tell you all about my struggles to memorize characters, my newly-formed friendships, and my (hopefully) nice and (possibly) bizarre encounters with local folks. At this point, though, I haven't done any of that yet: I'm leaving Ann Arbor for Beijing tomorrow morning. It's hard to say how I feel about this, since I haven't quite figured it out myself. My best guess is that I'm feeling a mixture of vague excitement and subdued panic. Even when I try to imagine what my life in Beijing will be like, I only manage to come up with a very hazy picture of classes, new people, and exploring parts of town, so there's nothing too concrete to incite either excitement or panic. I suspect that this is how I felt before I started Yale. And that's worked out well so far, so I'm not particularly worried.
Over the past few weeks, I've tried to read a bit about China. I'm now in the middle of Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones, and although I really like the book, I still don't feel at all knowledgeable about Chinese culture. My parents have been much more diligent than I. They listened to tapes of lectures on all of Chinese history while I was away on Glee Club tour, and my mom also read a short book about Chinese history. I'm very glad they've gotten so interested, because they've been a great source for crash-course historical information.
I'm off to bed now (though it's a bit past noon where I'll be tomorrow!). Please feel free to leave comments on the blog or email me -- I know I'll be craving the English communication after speaking only Mandarin every day. 再见！