People in My Group

Here is a brief description of the people in my group.

Blake- Blake goes to school at The College of New Jersey. He is a very talkative individual that likes to drink and have fun. At first I was on his "shit list" for making him wait at the airport when I arrived a day late but now we get along pretty well.

Kerry- Kerry is a member of tri Sigma at The College of New Jersey. She currently has a boyfriend but that hasn't kept her from making out with an older individual. But other than her indescrtion after drinking she's a lot of fun to hang out with.

John- John also goes to The College of New Jersey. John is an individual that thinks he knows everything but in reality has only slightly above average intelligence. He gets on everybody's nerves and everybody in the group spends a lot of energy trying to avoid him.

Liz= Liz is, or atleast was, a very quiete girl from Massachusetts. She apparantly really likes piercings and tatoos. She told us she has 10 tattoos and about 13 piercings including not one but two in her mouth. But she is a very nice girl and very easy to talk to. If we were at school she is probably the one I would be most likely to become friends.

Peng- Peng is the son of Chinese immigrants and is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Mandarin is the official language of China based off of the Beijing dialect. Cantonese is a Chinese language very popular in southern China, especially Hong Kong. Peng seems like a cool guy, although I haven't hung out with him as much.

Victor- First off Victor is my roomate. He is also the son of Chinese immigrants but he seems to have less of an interest in China than anybody else in the group. I think he would prefer to be in the US but his parents are working in Nanjing so he joined our program. Victor's parents are also very wealthy and give him everything. Victor and I don't get along great but we get along well enough not to bother each other.

Amanda- Amanda is half Chinese and currently spending her second semester here. She can get annoying if you hang out with her too long but in short spurts she is fine. She has a tendecy to hang on other people's arms which has become annoying to some. Overall, I would say we get along alright.

Sean- Sean is a cool guy. He is very into Judo and Sanda. He trains for his martial arts 4 or 5 times a week and lifts weights almost everyday. I think he competes for the US national team, but I'm not sure. Sean and I get along pretty well though I don't see him a whole lot because he is a very busy individual.
Looking at the group as a whole I would say I get along fine with almost everybody. John is the only one I have any real problems with. I would say right now I am closes to Sean, Blake, Liz and Kerry.

Week in Review

First I want to appolagize for not posting pictures like I said I would. I'm having difficulty with the computers in the computer lab. They aren't exactly newest computers in the world.

This has been a pretty quite week. About the only thing exciting from class was the discussion on polotics in my culture class. I basically learned the Communist Party initialy helped farmers by redistruting land and that Deng Xiaoping is the man. I also learned that the Communist Party of China has democratic ideals. The government works in the best interest of the people and listens to the people. I'm not sure how true that is but it's what the government believes.

On Wednesday we took a field trip to see a festival. We were guests of the festival and recieved front row seats. It was interesting for the first five minutes but then became very repetative. The first group was a group of drummers/dancers they were somewhat entertaining. Then the next ten groups were dancers of some sort. One thing interesting was the differance in age of the performers compared to the US. In the US it is usually the young that perform for crowds. Here it is the old people that put on performances.

One Friday and Saturday night we went back to Scarlet, the local club. It was a lot fun again though again several people got sick from drinking too much.

On Saturday morning we went to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. For those who don't know, the Nanjing Massacre occured in 1937 when the Japanese invaded China. Nanjing was the capitol at the time so after conquering Nanjing the Japanese raped and pillaged the Nanjing area. It is estimated that the Japanese killed 300,000 people including 200,000 citizens in the 6 weeks of the massacre and over 20,000 incidents of rape were recorded. The Museum is located at a mass grave sight. Part of the museum includes a cross section of the mass grave where there are human bones stacked four feet deep. The grave measured maybe 50 yards by 50 yards. The people of Nanjing are still very bitter about the massacre, in part because the Japanese government largly denies it ever happened.

That's basically all I've been up to this week. Talk to you all later.

~Aaron Yates

P.S. - Happy birthday grandma.

The Weekend

Friday night Blake, Sean, Liz, Kerry, Victor and I went to a local bar/club named Scarlet. Scarlet was a much nicer club than the one we went to last weekend. It was larger, had a better atmosphere and had better music than Castle. We had a lot of fun dancing and hanging out there. We also managed to avoid the problems of the previous week.

On Saturday most of the group paid for their drinking Friday night. We got up at 8:30am to go see Sun Yat-Sen's mausoleum and the tomb of the first Ming Emperor. Kerry and Liz both ended up puking at least once during the morning and the other guys moved very slowly. At Scarlet we received free drinks because we are foreigners and everybody else in the group seemed to think if the drinks are free you have to keep drinking. Other than certain members of the group being sick the tombs were very cool.

In China most major tombs have a similar design. First is a gate that marks the entrance to the tomb area. This is followed by a long path that is allows the individual to think about and honor their ancestor. Then you usually come up to a building that explains the history or life of the ancestor. This is followed by another path and then finally the actual tomb. Sun Yat-Sen's tomb had traditional architecture except the roof was blue, representing the sky. In China red or yellow are much more common for the roofs and tombs.

The Ming tomb was designed basically the same way except the where the Emperor had been buried was in the middle of a giant hill. They have not yet opened up his tomb because they are afraid if they did many artifacts inside could be ruined. They apparently are waiting for technology to develop to allow them to enter without causing damage.

On Sunday, Blake, Kerry, Roy and I got up early to go climb the Mt. Zijin. It took us a little over an hour to reach the top. Near the top of the mountain was a giant Buddha probably over 20 feet tall. We saw some people bow to the Buddha and others leave food as a sacrifice. After reaching the top we had a great view of Nanjing because the mountain lies more or less inside the city .

After returning home I took a nap then went out and bought a DVD player so I could watch my movies both now and when I return home. It only cost about $30 which isn't to bad. I'm also using it for class because my literature class is going to assign movies to watch for homework.

That's all I have for now I'll try to post some actual pictures later today.

~Aaron

The Start of Classes

I have now had all of my classes at least once. Chinese language still looks like it will be extremely easy. My literature professor seems very interesting. She is very into classroom discussions instead of lectures which I guess is good. She also asks a lot of abstract questions which definitely are not my forte, but I'll survive. History class was pretty boring. The professor wasn't always clear as to what time period we were discussing. The class also focuses on modern history too much for my taste. Chinese culture looks like it could be interesting except it is three hours long and I tend to get restless after about an hour.

On Monday, me, Victor and Peng went to a more upscale Cantonese restaurant in the west part of town. I tried some Dim Sum which I had heard was very good but I was disappointed in it. The outside is covered in a gooey rice thing. However, the meat on the inside was very good. They also had a Cantonese version of bao zi with meat wrapped in a fluffy bread made out of rice. It was even better than the bao zi I've had near campus. After dinner we got in a cab and headed back to campus.

Last night I was invited to go to dinner with one of our language partners. It was a very good experience because I got to see how a typical Chinese citizen lives. My friend, Huang, lives in the basement of the building my classes are in. As far as I could tell they lived in one room about 2/3 the size of my dorm room. They had a separate public kitchen down the hall and used the public restroom upstairs. The food was good I had sated fish some beef and some chicken. As I was eating my host kept piling food into my bowl. I guess in China the host wants to make sure the guest has plenty to eat. They also apparently drink their beverages from a bowl. I however drank my beer straight from the bottle which they said was also fine. I'm very glad I was invited to this meal. I feel I learned a lot from the experience.