Monday, June 24, 2013

When in China...I blend in REALLY WELL...until I open my mouth.

June 25, 2013
      My aversion to blogging (largely due to laziness, I will sadly admit) has finally been trumped by my ‘bursting at the seams’ urge to discuss various points of Chinese culture with my fellow Americans (or like-minded Western cultured ppls), which has been greatly limited by a time zone difference of 9-12 hrs and failure to have internet (which is hopefully now forever remedied). In other words, friends—I’m missing you guys and my regular daily conversations/discussions/debates in person and on chat and so have convinced myself to blog again.
     This was for my study abroad in England (it took a while to unearth the password again), so I guess it’s appropriate to continue with my ‘research’ abroad in China. For those of you not in the know, I am currently living in China for 10 weeks (6/1/13 – 8/7/13) under the East Asia Pacific Summer Institute Program through the US National Science Foundation. I have visited family in ShenZe and Nanning the first week, participated in orientation with my 29 fellow EAPSI-ers in China in Beijing for another week, and just began last week in Changchun, China (NE China) at my lab, where I’m learning how to extract and amplify ancient human DNA.
BUT, over the next few weeks, I will focus on various things that have caught my eye since being here. As a sort of prelude, here’s the topics I plan to write something about, and feel free to let me know if you have any topics you want me to start observing or asking about. I might oblige you. This is wholly based on what I’ve observed and is in no way systematically researched. So, feel free to go ‘Just who have you been talking to??? I’ve NEVER seen or heard that!’

Anyways, topics (in no particular order):

  1.           Transportation—I have so much to say on this topic! Weirdly, one of the ones I’m most excited about rambling about.
    1.      Taxis
    2.            Airport Security
    3.            Trains
  2.           Food—yummmm
  3.      Expatriate lifestyle
  4.      Academia
  5.      Environmental Issues/Sustainability
  6.      Economic Growth
  7.      Housing Development
  8.      So Many People!
  9.      Shopping Areas
  10.      Anything else that comes to mind…
Glad to be re-entering the blogosphere!
Mel

Random fact of the day!post!whatever!: In Chinese the first character of Jon Stewart's name is 'jiong', which looks like 囧 which means 'awkward' and looks like an awkward face!!!! :D:D And 'jiong' is pronounced 'jee-yohng' which is about as close as you can get to 'jon'! In my Chinese character typing program, if I type in 'jiong', I can also put down o(╯□╰)o as an option! 'jiong' 囧 is totally my new fave character!