Leaving tonight - Blogabond

Okay okay, I lied, I'm not in Beijing yet, I actually leave tonight/past midnight but I have nothing to do now since I'm all packed and I can't play the Sims 2 on my laptop. My flight departs 2 am (Cali time) and I arrive in Beijing around 5am in Beijing time (Which would be about 2 pm on Thursday in the States, I think). I'm trying to relearn some Chinese with my old textbook because there's a placement test sometime before classes start. I have been going over the simplified form of characters since that's what they use in China and because I chose to study the traditional form throughout UCLA, it'll be a challenge for me to adjust.

For those who don't know what simplified and traditional characters are all about, the traditional form is more difficult since there's more strokes. I don't really know much of the history, you can wiki it, but from what I know, China standardized all Chinese characters to be in simplified form to increase literacy at some point when they reformed. Traditional characters are used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. So here's a sample sentence, first in simplified, then in traditional, and finally in English:

我们的衬衫着火
我們的襯衫着火
"Our shirt is on fire."

Notice only some of the characters are different.

What I'm really anticipating on the plane ride is boredom, so I brought a few books: Lonely Planet for Beijing (of course, I put a book cover so people don't know I'm foreign), Pastoralia by George Saunders (satirical book from class that I never really finished), and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Yep, that is all for today.

written by

jlu on June 25, 2008 from Los Angeles, United States

from the travel blog: Study Abroad in China

tagged PreDeparture

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