Hutong beat

Today I was woken up at 6:30 by Scott and Lulu asking me to get breakfast with them. I was somewhat in a state of undress and also extremely tired, so I went back to sleep until around 7:45. I went to a street vendor to get these sort of steamed buns with vegetables in them with Stephanie and Jen. On our way back we found the north gate was closed so we had to go all the way down XuTiCheng until we found another opening to get back on campus.

When we got to class we were surprised with a hutong tour by one of the students in our group (her name is escaping me now for some reason). Hutongs are a type of narrow streets or alley where people live in Beijing. After a presentation from her on the history of hutongs, we hopped on the subway and rode over to where some of the preserved hutongs are. In the same area is a Tibetan Buddhist temple and the Imperial College, as well as the temple of Confucius. We didn't get to go in to any of these, but we got a nice tour of the hutongs and ate at a really good Yunnan restaurant inside of an artist hutong. We rode the subway back and I finally got both a phone and SIM card, so I now have a telephone here. I doubt any of you reading this are in mainland China, but if someone is you should ask me for my numba~~

After we got back we had a very interesting presentation from Ackbar Abbas, a professor from UC Irvine. He talked about his idea of cyber kung fu in Lee Ang's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon compared to the slow, even pacing and futuristic elements in Wong Kar-wai's 2046. Now I'm back in my room relaxing a bit before I go out to dinner at a Hot Pot place and then for drinks with Sam and some other people from the program.

Today I learned how to say "water" and "breakfast" in Chinese. Water is shui de and breakfast is zaocan.