A Day in the Life

I thought I would let you guys know what my life is like over here today. So here is what I do on an average day. Today is Monday. I get up at like 6am and go for a run around the river about 2 blocks from our house. It is almost always foggy and drizzly in the morning. Then I get home and have breakfast of fruit and coffee and sometimes oatmeal or something. Laura and I leave for school on our bikes at about 7:45am everyday. We get to school at a little after 8, park our bikes and sit down to do a little work before class starts at 8:30.

I have class in a big Chinese style building that over looks a really pretty park thing with little stone tables and a pond. My first class everyday is my comprehensive, or basic, Chinese class (Zhong he Han yu). That goes until 10am and then I have a half hour break until my next class at 10:30. What this class is varies everyday. It could be listening, reading comprehension, writing, conversation, or audiovisual. Which class it is depends on the day. At noon there is a two hour break, which is kind of a national standard. Working hours in China are from 8:00-noon and 2:30-6:30 with a two hour break (or xiu xi, which means rest) from noon-2:30. This means that all banks, offices, virtually everything is closed from noon-2:30. It takes a little getting used to. During the break I usually sit on the second floor of the Overseas Program Office building on this little porch they have and eat lunch and do homework. I've been trying to bring my own lunch because eating out for every meal gets a little too spicy and greasy for me. I bring my lunch in this little compartmentalized lunch container I bought, which is really cool. I like it alot. Below is a picture of me looking up characters, which I do alot! After that my day to day schedule gets a little crazy. Some days I have more Chinese class at 2-3:30pm, but some days not. I have a 2pm class on Tuesday and on Monday and Thursday on odd weeks. It is very confusing and took me forever to figure out exactly what was going on because the schedule they gave us is written all in Chinese. Our teachers are all really nice too. I like them alot. They are all pretty younger woman, which I found interesting. I still can't figure out why.

Besides Chinese I am taking 3 other classes. These classes are a little different though because they are set up pretty much especially for us and are in a small discussion format without formal lectures or anything. I take Chinese Archeology, which is good but by far the most informal class so far. This is probably a good thing though since this class is taught in Chinese. The first class we just had an introduction to the class and then went on a tour of the museum on campus. As part of this class we also get to take a week long field trip to Xian in the spring, which I'm really excited about. This class meets tomorrow (Tuesday) from 3-5:30pm. The second class I have is Industrial Ecology. This class is really interesting and I like it alot. The teacher speaks very good English and it is very different to look at how China is talking about and dealing with sustainability compared with the US. So far the biggest difference I can see is where the burden of responsibility is placed. In China they talk alot about Industrial Ecology ideas like Life-Cycle-Analysis, Circular Economy, and ISO14000. They are all very much production based efficiency schemes that apply almost exclusively to manufacturers. In China it's not about consumption choices, it's about how we can make the choices we already make and just be more efficient about our production and disposal systems on a very large, institutional level. Contrarily, it seems like in the US the conversation is always much more about individual consumption choices. All US sustainable policy revolves around a "turn off the lights", "reduce, reuse, and recycle", "plant a tree" sort of mentality that calls on consumers to make environmentally conscious choices that will drive the market and the economy towards sustainability. The key concepts in the US are Environmental Footprint and Product Stewardship. I can't figure out if this is because we have given up on effective environmental policy coming from a federal level, or we are unwilling to "hinder" the economy with the policies, or what. But it is very interesting and I hope to learn more. I have this class every Wednesday from 2-3:30. The third class I'm taking is a night class on Thursdays from 7:30-8:30 on Chinese History and Politics. We are reading a book called Governing China that has to be ordered from the US because its not available in China. The professor is a professor of Chinese Philosophy, officially, and is really cool. He wants democracy in China and lived through the Cultural Revolution and was there during the Tianamen Square riots. He asks us really hard questions and makes us think very deeply about the material we are reading, which is really great. Other than that, I have Tai Chi (Tai ji in Chinese) on Thursday afternoons from 4:30-6pm.

After class gets out I go swimming. The pool is open from 4-7pm everyday and today I swam from 4pm-5:10 and did about 3000 meters. It's getting a little chilly, 21 degrees Celsius today, but it's still pretty good. I like it cold. Then today I met up with the rest of my group and we had dinner before we went to a meeting with Andrea. Andrea is a woman in Chengdu who has lived here for a few years and acts as a sort of mentor to us here. We meet once a week to make sure everyone is still alive and she answers alot of our questions about how to do things in Chengdu. Then I come home and do hw and go to sleep and do it all over again. I'm a pretty busy girl here, but I feel like everything takes about twice as long as it would in the states too.