Featured image: I took my longboard to Beijing Olympic Park and rode around for a few hours in the middle of October. The weather was perfect and the views were amazing. I am lucky enough to not have class on Friday so I could avoid any weekend crowds. For my last blog post, I wanted to revisit my goals for studying abroad as a nice way to conclude the semester. The first and foremost objective I had in mind when…
Featured image: Shoutout to the instagram that Heather and I run @subtleboba. I have been very inactive but now that I know how cheap it is to get bubble tea delivered, that might change. Midterms week just ended for me. I am officially past the halfway point of the semester, which feels a little weird to say. It seems like I’ve only just started to really get used to living here. Midterms weren’t too bad since the classwork is pretty…
Featured image: Iconic pic of 天安门 (Tiananmen), complete with a photo bomb of a cute family. SO, so busy that day. Beijing is weird. Can I say that? I’m gonna. Beijing is weird. My hometown, Buffalo, NY, is not a huge city. Poughkeepsie is even smaller, so I’m not used to a city that’s so big and is full of so many different things and people. Also, the content in my Chinese course is slowly approaching more and more complex…
Featured image: A Self-time Study, Taken On an iPhone on Beijing’s 地铁, On 6号线. I would say a success? As of right now, I’m officially halfway through my time here in Beijing. I kind of can’t believe I’m saying that and that I’ve come this far. Today I took my last midterm and I’m about to start my October break. I must admit, since I’ve last written I haven’t done anything as 厉害 (impressive) as hiking the Great Wall at…
Featured image: The only time I find peace and quiet is on my walk home at 1AM. One of the biggest adjustments I had to make was living in a place full of people. No longer was I at Vassar, a small liberal arts school. No longer was I in Poughkeepsie, a town in the boring mid-Hudson Valley. Instead, I was at a big school in one of China’s largest, most overcrowded cities. China in general is overcrowded and Beijing…
Featured image: I had this for lunch once. I thought it was wild they were just handing out these chunks of fish. It was delicious though. Only 15 RMB. When I talk to my friends or family, they of course ask “How’s China?” And all I can talk about is the food and how everything is so cheap. The food is delicious and costs practically nothing. My meals in the dining halls cost at most 15 RMB, which is a…
Featured image: Us after running around 南锣鼓巷, a historic district of Beijing. We rewarded ourselves after a hard day’s work with some Mexican food that honestly wasn’t bad. Hey there folks! My name is Nick Gorman, I’m from Buffalo, New York, and I’m a Chinese and Biology double major with a correlate sequence in Queer Studies. This fall, I am studying abroad at CET Beijing’s Language Intensive Chinese Program. I’m studying Chinese at Capital Normal University, which is in Beijing’s…
I want to dedicate my second and last post to my feelings for the beautiful city of Beijing and how this exchange program has changed me as a person. While I have mixed feelings about the program during the first few weeks after I arrived, I gradually came to appreciate my experience here more. I have become more mature and adaptive. Living by myself without a support system or someone to check up on me regularly would have once been…
I consider myself fortunate. This semester, the fall of my senior year, is my second semester abroad experience since being at Vassar. The first was sophomore summer. Both then and now, I enrolled in Hamilton College’s ACC (Associated Colleges in China) program in Beijing because I wanted to be in a big city in mainland China doing an intensive Mandarin language pledge program. More than halfway into the fall semester, I feel happy about my choice and hoped to share…
After two weeks visiting my home in Saigon, Vietnam, one day before my departure for Beijing I had to admit that I was not ready, and even scared. Having spent a summer in Shanghai right before my exchange at Yuanpei College, Peking University (PKU), I thought I wouldn’t feel too nervous, as I was confident that I already knew how most things in China work, from traveling on public transportation, to ordering food in a restaurant, to asking for directions…