Happy 60th China!

The last week hasn't been too eventful due to the fact that I have been fighting a cold. I went to a pharmacy in my neighborhood where I quickly realized that taking any sort of medication here will be a risk in and of itself....nothing is in English (and I'm allergic to way too many medications to take a chance!). So until I learn more Chinese, I am going to fight colds the good old fashioned way with no medicine at all!

One thing that I have neglected to write about in my last two posts is the precautions the Chinese take with the swine flu. EVERY morning for the last two+ weeks that I have been here, they come into my dorm room between 6:40 AM and 8:00 AM to take my temperature. Most mornings, I am still fast asleep with ear plugs in and sleeping mask on. They tap me on the shoulder, I roll over and take my face mask off. Then, they stick a gun-looking thing up to my forehead to make sure that I'm at or under the 'safe' temperature of 36.5 C. Luckily, I haven't had a fever yet because if I do, I'll immediately be quarantined. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I won't have to endure that while in China!

School is getting a little bit better. I've learned about 100+ vocabulary words and can now write/read at least 30 characters. I can have basic conversations like, "My name is Jamie. I am from America. One beer please. Where is the toilet?!" Learning Chinese fluently is definitely not a goal that I have, but it is exciting to be able to have conversations with the locals now. Granted, I sound like I've got the mentality of a preschooler being able to only peak simple sentences (one verb, one noun, etc.!) but it's better than pointing and nodding all the time! The one thing that scares me is the word chicken. It's spelled the exact same as the word prostitute. The only difference is the tone used. I'm terrified that I'm going to sit down in a restaurant and order a prostitute with noodles. I'll stick to veggies until I master that pronunciation! ;)

My trip to Chengdu isn't going to happen....we could not get the train tickets worked out to travel anywhere outside of Beijing. So, 5 of us have planned a 'backpacking in Beijing' trip. We are leaving today and will be touring the greater Beijing area, sleeping in hostels each night so that we can really explore the city. I'm excited to visit the Simitai section of the Great Wall. It's a 10K hike on the wall which is supposed to be very challenging!

Yesterday I celebrated China's 60th anniversary by visiting the Summer Palace, picture attached. It is a beautiful, huge palace surrounded by a man-made lake where the emperors used to vacation and get away from the chaos of Beijing. I applaud the Chinese for the quick and thorough effort they went through to ensure that the National Day was a pleasant day. For example, they placed flowers, lanterns, banners, etc. all over the place in order to beautify the city. Wednesday night, they shot a chemical off in the sky to chase off any clouds and pollution to make sure it was a beautiful day (this occured during the Olympics too). I happened to be out late on Wednesday night to see this for myself...there was a heavy, damp, unnatural mist all over the city. It worked though because the weather was beautiful on National Day!

My roommate, Mei Xian (pronounced 'may shin'), and I celebrated her 27th birthday on Tuesday (picture attached). She is from South Korea and we get along great, to the extent that we can communicate. She doesn't speak a lot of English and I don't know any Korean and very little Chinese, but we get by. She giggles at me all the time when I say something she doesn't understand and then I write down in English what I've said and try to explain what it means. Things like "how's it going" and "gotcha" are actually really challenging to explain to people!!

Tim Tebow, if you're reading this, my heart broke when I read about your hit and resulting concussion. I trust that you are recovering quickly. We need you back at 100% to take on LSU on the 10th. If there is anything that I can do, including flying home to massage your head, please let me know! Out of the 14 million people in Beijing, I finally found one other Florida Gator who happens to also be going to school at BLCU. Jonathan is my new best friend on campus. He'll be my Gator game-watching partner for the remainder of the season!

Erica, this is your last week as a single woman...enjoy it! I'll be thinking of you and Tony on the 10th and wish you a lifetime of love and happiness together! Also, I'll miss everyone who'll be at your wedding that I haven't seen or talked to in way too long!

Several of you have emailed asking for my address and/or cell phone number. Please do not send explosives, knives or guns. The Chinese wouldn't like it and I don't really need them!

Jamie Barden
Room 315, No. 17 Building
Beijing Language and Culture University
15 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District
Beijing, China 100083

We have been instructed to advise people to put return addresses on the back of the envelope instead of the front when sending mail to China. My cell phone number is: +0086 134 393 44157. Zai jian!