6/23/06

 

China Update #13 by Darrol Butler

 

Dear Family, Friends, Fellow Students, and Professors:

 

June 1 & 15

 

Finals . . .      Hello Everyone!  Well, my classes just finished and I think that I did pretty well on my finals considering how rigorous the Chinese language program is at Beijing University .  I studied diligently for my finals and I will probably get one A and two B's, in my twenty units of classes.  In the States I would probably be hoping for all A's and maybe a B or two, but here the system is different.   Like last semester there was new material (new words, sentence structure, and sentence patterns) on my Chinese reading/grammar final, however this time the amount of new material on the final was substantial.   Though I studied diligently for my finals, it is just difficult to prepare for material that you haven't studied.  In fact, I still don't know how to prepare for it.

 

Any way, my classes are done with, and I learned a lot during the past two semesters at Beijing University .  Though the Chinese language is very difficult, I feel that I have made considerable progress towards my goal of being able to speak the Chinese language well enough to efficiently communicate with people.   Of course I still need a lot more time using the Chinese language in order to reach the level of understanding that I desire for.

 

Renewal Application . . .     I am happy to announce that my renewal application for another year of study at Beijing University though the CSU IP program was approved.  So, I will be spending one more year in Beijing studying Chinese language.  I think that an additional year of study here will improve my Chinese skills dramatically.   Not only will an additional year help to improve my listening and speaking skills, but it will also help me to amass a much larger vocabularly, as well as increase the number of characters that I can recognize and the number of characters that I can write from free recall.   I truly believe that I am lucky to be accepted for another year, and I will work my hardest to make it a successful one.

 

In addition to doing a little traveling this summer (my friend Toby Bodeen, the Career and Transfer Center director at Shasta College is arriving here in Beijing tomorrow for a three week trip in China), I am also planning on doing a lot of self study of the Chinese language, by reviewing my textbooks, using Chinese language software, talking with people, and probably hiring a tutor for a couple hours each week.   I am also going to see if I can teach, or volunteer to teach, English here in Beijing for a few hours each week.  I am told that some of the other students were able to find jobs teaching English, so I will see how it goes.

 

My friend Mike Williams came to Beijing after just finishing up with his one year University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC) program in Chengdu, in Sichuan province.  Mike applied to the CSU IP program at Beijing University, and was accepted, so we will end up getting an apartment together, for the upcoming year of study, once my lease expires at my current apartment.   Currently Mike is sleeping on the floor of my bedroom on top of his inflatable mattress, and sharing the room with me.

 

Making Cookies . . .      Back at home in the states I like baking and cooking.  Not only do I find cooking my own food to be inexpensive, but I also find great pleasure in making my own food, and sharing it with friends.   By cooking my own food I can save money, and I get to eat healthier foods than I would typically eat if I were going to a restaurant.  Since arriving in China I have not cooked very much as a lot of the ingredients I am used to cooking with are either hard to find, or are very expensive.   In addition, I have been unwilling to buy some of the many cooking utensils that are needed when making western foods.  However, I have often craved some of the foods I make back home.   So, for Christmas my mother sent me most of the necessities to make burritos, which ended up being a wonderful experience.  I cannot begin to explain how happy I was to sink my teeth into a burrito again.

 

I have also been craving some of the bread and cookies that I used to frequently bake.   So, my mother brought me some of the necessary ingredients to make cookies when she came over during the Labor Day holiday.   A couple of weeks ago I finally had a chance to bake them with some of my friends.   Because very few Chinese houses have ovens in them, Mike, Juice and I went to the UniMax pastry shop in the Dazhongsi ( Great Bell Temple) area to use their oven to bake our cookies.   Since I regularly study at the UniMax shop and I have befriended the workers, they were more than happy to let us use the oven to make cookies with.   Both Juice and the UniMax workers were very excited that we were going to be making "American" cookies and they were curious about how we were going to go about making them.  In fact, they were so excited that they asked us a plethora of questions without taking the time to see the results of what we were doing.  Of course they had never made cookies or cakes before from scratch, so they had never mixed the ingredients together for cookie dough or beat eggs and butter together with flour.   In addition to the workers, a few customers came into the shop when we were baking the cookies and they too became highly interested in the process.    It was definitely a lot of fun, and Mike and I were practically drooling when the smell of fresh baked cookies started emanating from the oven.  We had the UniMax shop smelling wonderful!

 

Juice and the UniMax workers were so curious about the cookies and anxious to see how they would come out that they were constantly opening the oven door to check on them.   Mike and were kept busy making sure that they would leave the oven alone long enough for the cookies to bake properly.  After the cookies were finally finished we took them out of the oven to let them cool but it was impossible to let them sit there while Mike and I were practically drooling over them, and with Juice and the UniMax workers so bent on trying them.   Needless to say the cookies were only out of the oven for a few minutes before all but four or five of them were devoured!

 

Until the next email update, take care, and thanks for reading,

 

Darrol Butler

hairyleprechaun@gmail.com

 

My new address:

Darrol Butler

c/o Office of CSU International Programs

Shao Yuan, Building 2, Room 101

Peking University

Haidian District, Beijing, 100871

China

 

Photo List:

 

Photos of Mike, Juice and I baking oatmeal raisin cookies with the workers at the UniMax pastry shop in the Taiyangyuan apartment complex in the Dazhongsi area.

Mixing the butter and sugar.		Stirring the cookie dough.
Darrol, Unimax worker, Mike		Darrol and Mike dropping cookies.
Juice and Unimax worker		Mike and Juice
Unimax oven		and the finished product!