A hectic (but awesome) final weekend

Wow, I'm done. After eight long weeks of intensive Chinese study, worrying about tingxies, studying shengci, struggling to understand the locals, experimenting--many times unsuccessfully--with Chinese food, ad nauseam, I have finally graduated from (the equivalent of) second year Chinese. In retrospect, I'm glad I spent as much time as I did studying rather than going out to party or even just exploring, because honestly, such opportunities presented themselves naturally and, in the end, still allowed me to both dramatically improve my Chinese and familiarize myself with the city. Final verdict on DSICP? Definitely the way to go for a Light Fellow studying second year Chinese, but only if he/she has the discipline to study hard at least some of the time. (This is assuming that said Light Fellow is actually interested in getting better at Chinese, which I discovered isn't necessarily true.)

On Friday after our final written and oral exams, we had a closing ceremony/party in the restaurant downstairs. I think the best part was the slideshow: Zhao Laoshi did a really good job putting it together, and it showed many of the most memorable moments from the summer. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that most of the photos he used were mine, I probably would have gotten a little teary-eyed. Shhh. Afterwards, we had a few skits and performances by students (including "Dui Mian De Nu Hai Kan Guo Lai" by the second year Yalies and "Bu De Bu Ai" plus a dance routine by me and my roommate). At the very end, they gave out various awards, and I ended up winning a really really nice electronic dictionary/MP3 player/video player/handheld game console. Then we took photos and said our goodbyes. I don't like goodbyes. Alas.

That night started off a little rough and slowly but surely got better. A bunch of us went to The Place (there's a place in Beijing called The Place, don't ask me why) to watch the opening ceremony, but once we got there we were told that they wouldn't be showing it on the main screen in front of the Place, so we hurried to Tim's Texas BBQ to watch it on a smaller TV. We ordered food and watched the ceremony, but found out an hour later that our food wouldn't be coming. So we walked back to The Place, got some Indian food, went outside, sat in a big circle, and watched the rest of the opening ceremony, which they were showing on the big screen after all. Interestingly, during our meal, a news reporter came and interviewed us, so we might have ended up on Chinese TV. Afterwards, we took the new subway line to the stop closest to the Bird's Nest (the main Olympics stadium) and watched the amazing fireworks show. Serendipitously, an area right next to where we were standing was also part of the show, so I was able to take some beautiful, up-close photos. Stay tuned for those.

Saturday was yet another new adventure. The awesome Carol Yu was able to secure tickets for women's handball, so all of us met up at the same subway station as the night before and walked over to the venue. We watched two games: the first was Romania versus Kazakhstan, and it was not very interesting, since Kazakhstan basically got slaughtered. But the second, Russia versus Korea, was incredibly exciting, not only because I'm Korean, but because of the history of the two teams--Russia was the 2007 world champion, and Korea was the 2004 Olympic silver medalists. As fate would have it, the game ended in a draw. It felt more like a victory for Korea though, because they were trailing by a lot with just ten minutes remaining and managed to pull off an awesome scoring streak to tie it up. After the game, we went to the far east side of Beijing for a farewell dinner with some of Carol's church members, since she was leaving for Hong Kong. The food there was tasty, especially the supposedly really spicy fish that I actually didn't think was that spicy. After dinner, we were all tired, so we took a cab back to CNU and I knocked out almost instantly.

On Sunday, I checked out and headed over to Devin's place to spend the night, since I foolishly had bought airplane tickets for the 11th rather than the 10th like everyone else. We hung out most of the day, just shopping and visiting random places in Wangfujing. The next morning, I took the airport express subway line (which, annoyingly, had no convenient space for really big luggage) to Terminal 3, where I passed through customs surprisingly smoothly and got on my plane--not back to LA, but to the Land of the Morning Calm: Korea.

And that is where I am now. My uncle owns Hyundai Residence Hotel here in 충무로 (Chungmuro), so he gave me a room with a really nice view of Seoul, in addition to spending money for the next two weeks. He even bought me laundry detergent and made arrangements for the restaurant down the street to give me free meals. It's nice to have good connections, sometimes. Also, although I'm technically done with my own Light Fellowship, I plan to continue blogging while I'm here, since I'm still in an East Asian country (and, at the very least, I'll probably end up meeting with some of the Light Fellows here). Photos and a report on my first few days back in the motherland coming up shortly. Bye bye!