Hey Guys!

So life is pretty chill, it rains a lot now. Still not you would call cold weather, but definitely getting cooling down a bit. School is a bit boring, but ok. I don't think I've told you guys about the schooling sitution here! I am in the Intermediate B class (which is really just the middle class, one higher--full of RM's--and one lower). There are eight people total in my class, six are fellow BYU students, one is from West Point. We start class everyone morning at 8am, except on Wednesdays and Fridays. We go from 8 until 12, have a lunch break until 2, and then have classes until 4pm. On Mondays and Wednesdays we have a Taichi class from 4:15 until 5pm. There are little breaks in between as well. We have a speaking class (eight hours a week), a writing/reading class (eight hours a week), a culture class (four hours a week), a history class (two hours a week) and a tai chi (hour and a half every week). It is kinda tiring, but good for the Chinese!! Well, I have to get going, more later!
Love,
Brooke

Its Me, I'm alive, and doing great!

Hey Guys!

So I just got back from a trip to LouYang, Xi'an and Beijing with my BYU group! It was pretty fun.. Beijing has changed soo much since we were there! I was able to o into the Olympic Area and see the Water Cube! I also went to a different section of the Great Wall and the leaves were all changing colors, it was very beautiful. But it was fun telling my friends about how my awesome and adventurous grandma had taken me around China last year! They all think you must be one tough Grandma! I would like to learn more about your previous adventures in China, there is still so much I don't know! I met a girl from Harbin last week, she was very sweet. You lived there before right? I remember you sending me those beautiful pictures of the ice sculptures they do in Harbin. China is so amazing and beautiful, I'm so grateful I've been able to incorporate it into my life.

I watched a movie last night, The Last Emperor, that movie about Pu Yi. We visited the Forbidden City when we were in Beijing, and I've started to learn about Pu Yi in the culture class Professor Lefgren teaches.(she came from BYU with my group). The movie was pretty intense, well, Pu Yi's life was pretty intense! He was chosen to be emperor at the age of three and was abdicated when he was six. But eventhough he was technically the emperor anymore, the government allowed him to still live in the Forbidden City as an emperor until he was placed under house arrest at the age of 21. And actually, he wasn't allowed out of the Forbidden City until that time as well. So all this life he has been allowed to do whatever he wanted, and never had to do anything for himself (including things like brushing his teeth and dressing himself). Anyway, it just continues in so many crazy ways until he ends up dying in an alley way at the age of 60ish, having become a poor gardener for the Communists. It is pretty insane! Good movie, Pu Yi is an interesting guy to learn about.

Well, I have to start working on my final project for my culture class, which is some type of study on the China. I'm going to do mine using the question, "What are girls my age doing in China?". So I will be interviewing 19- 25 year old girls, seeing where they live (at home, dorms, own apartments etc.), what their occupation is, their level of education, etc. And then when I find certian patterns (like poorly educated girls live in their factory's dorms, working six days a week and making five USD a week, etc) I'll use China's history to explain why they are like they are as best as I am able to...or something like that.

Well, gotta go,

later,
Brooke

Orphanage in Xi'an

So I was wanting to write about this earlier, but hadn't gotten around to it! On my recent trip to Xi'an, my whole BYU group was fortunate enough to be able to visit an orphanage. We meet the founder of this orphanage at church in Xi'an, and she invited us to come see it. Amanda de Lange is the angel from South Africa who decided that her mission in life is to help save abandoned children in China. China has a high rate of abandonment (especially in rural areas) of baby girls and babies with birth defects. Because of the one child policy here in China, families want male babies who will take care of them in their old age. Women are not seen (traditionally) to be part of their parent's family anymore after they are married. And farmers do not have enough money to pay for surgeries, so they tend to abandon children born with problems. Many are left on the sides of roads, thrown away, or even killed. As China continues to develop these old ideas about women are starting to fade, but not as much as it needs to. So many of the children at Amanda's House (the name of her orphanage) are females with serious health issues. Some were born with spina bifida, cleft palates, or just red birthmarks. When we went, there was a twenty five day old baby who had been abandoned because of a large red birthmark covering one side of her face. Amanda says that this kind of mark is easily removed through a simple laser procedure, which the baby will get when it is a bit older. Amanda has been able to pay (because of donations for many generous people) for all the babies to get the medical attention they need, and it is soo great!! The night we were there, Amanda had to leave early because of the girls was being adopted that night by a Danish couple (if I remember right). The girl in red I'm playing with in the pictures is Erica, and she is headed to New York pretty soon! Amanda has a blogsite where people can donate to, but I haven't got the address right now. I do have an e-mail if anyone is interested in e-mailing her some questions. My BYU group was very touched by this experience, and we have decided help out Amanda's House by donating supplies and some money. It was an amazing experience to see how one person can make such a big difference in lives of others, and I'm so grateful to have been able to meet Amanda and to see the beautiful children she helps with.

Da Jia Hao!

Hey Everyone!
Just thought I'd say hi real quick before I set out to Tai chi class! We are getting ready for our midterms here, but right after (and I mean like that night) we will be going on a ten day tour! We will be setting out for Beijing, Xi'an, and a few other cool places! I'm super excited and can't wait for the adventures to come! I hope everyone is doing well and that this blog is helpful for those of you that want to see pictures or just check on me :). If you know of anyone who would like to see this, feel free to just pass the address on! Love you all and hope life is good!
Love,
Brooke

September 30th

So I'm in a place called Yang Shuo, an hour and a half from Gui Ling. We arrived late Monday night. Yesterday was soo much fun! We biked all around the city and took a little bamboo raft down the Li River (after we swam in it). The mountains are soo pretty here, the Karst topography is really breathtaking. Then we biked for another twenty minutes and hiked this really cool mountain called Moon Hill. After that came the best part of the day--mud caving!! We hiked through this really huge cavern and there were two mud pits which we jumped into!! It was the craziest feeling to be floating in mud! We were all totally covered!! It was pretty awesome! Then we swam in a pond to clean off before biking back to our hostel. One of the best days of my life. Today we all woke up really early (5:20 am) and went on a river cruise along another river and it was gorgeous! All for now!
Love,
Brooke

September 27th

Well, lots of things have been going on here in China, all pretty exciting and fun things!! After returning back from Huang Shan, it was kinda hard to go back to school. It feels like high school in Taiwan all over again!! Except I understand my classes this time, lol. But I’m typically in school Monday through Thursday from 8am to 5pm. Bleh eh?? But I do have a nice lunch break from 12 to 2pm. So…what have I been up to huh…hmmm…soo many things!! I guess some of the highlights would be the time the police took me to the post office, KTVing with my crazy friends, dropping laundry (and then retrieving it ) seven stories , and going to a few cool historical sites around Nanjing. So starting with my personal favorite, how exactly did Brooke manage to get a police officer to drive her to the post office? What happened was that one of my Chinese teachers had assigned us to write her and send her a letter concerning our trip to Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain). So I had written a letter, but was unaware as to where a nearby post office might be. I was walking around campus looking for one, without much success, when I thought it might be helpful to ask this police officer who looked like he was patrolling the area. So (all in Chinese mind you) I asked him if he could point me in the direction of the post office. But he was like, hey, my partner and I can drive you there if you’d like! Now normally I wouldn’t just jump into a car with some random Chinese people, but since these two were police officers (and I really wanted to drive around in a patrol car!!) I said ok and he gave me the front seat! I knew the post office was supposedly pretty close by as well, so I felt ok with it. While he was driving me there (the other officer didn’t say anything to me) we talked about all sorts of cool things! He asked me what country I was from and when I answered he said, “Oh, that makes sense because you really represent the ideal beautiful American woman” lol!!! Whatever, but it was pretty funny. And then we talked about how I had learned Chinese, he said it was really good, and then we discussed a few of the differences between Chinese and American culture. It was really fun! We arrived at the post office and he was like, I can wait here for you if you’d like, but I told him it was alright and that I’d be able to find my way back! Then he gave me his phone number so that if had any other problems or needed help with anything I could give him a call. Crazy eh? So all my friends here think its funny I have my own police taxi. But I’ll probably never call him, so meh. So Ktv…that is one of our favorite things to do for fun here! I’ve only gone twice, but we (about 12 to 20 of us) get together at a KTV place and so it only ends up being like a $1.50 to $3ish for two or more hours of singing. You really see a different side of people when they sing, its way fun! People who are usually pretty shy totally come out, singing and dancing and having lots of fun! And since we are all LDS, its clean and fun! We did join with some other foreigners once, and it was still pretty cool. We haven’t learned any Chinese songs yet, but hope to before we go home! Luckily most karaoke places (KTV stands for karaoke here) have tons of English songs that we’ve heard of . And now for the laundry…well…if you didn’t know, in China they mainly only have washing machines, no dryers. And so after you wash your clothes, you have to hang them outside to dry. My roommate, Geneva, had a lot of dry clothes hanging out, and I needed to borrow some hangers, so I was bringing them in for her. But as I grabbed one, the undershirt next to it totally fell…and I live on the seventh floor!! So I was freaking out, but it luckily caught on someone else’s clothing line before it hit the ground! So I walked down to it (no elevator in my building) and found the undershirt was on the second floor, where I couldn’t reach it without some sort of pole. So I ran back upstairs and found this bamboo pole by our door (we are the last floor and the next set of stairs up has all this left over construction junk) and ran back down. Unfortunately three Chinese people were just chilling right where I wanted to be and so I went up to them and was like, “Hey, I live on the seventh floor and my clothes fell and I need to get it….” Kind of thing and they were all like, oh!! And so I had to climb up this fence thing in order to be high enough to use the pole, and one of the guys held my pole while the other guy helped me get my footing. I was soo embarrassed, but totally appreciated all their help! So there I was, clinging to this fence thing, trying to poke the undershirt with the pole, and they were all like “almost there, a little higher, to the right!!” kind of thing (in Chinese mind you) and after several attempts I was successful!! But then I had to get down, so once again one took the pole (plus the shirt this time!!) and one helped me down. I was blushing soo bad and totally embarrassed, but it was really really funny! So those are some of the highlights from the last week and I’m excited to have more! I love you all and hope you are all doing well!!Love, Brooke

September 14th

Dear Everyone,

So life has been pretty good…busy but good. Everyday something exciting happens and I just love the surprises China presents us with. Today is Zhong Tou Jie, a.k.a. the moon festival. So moon cakes are the popular item right now. They are these bread things with fillings, usually a fruity kind of jell with fruit chunks or sesame seed type things. Most of them taste pretty bad to us Americans, but the ones with red bean paste in them are probably my favorite. I really like a few of them, but it is true that most of them are just a little too strange for the western pallet. So because it’s the Moon festival here, we went to a concert last night that was held in honor of the festival and it was waaaay fun! We actually found out about the concert the day before when we were touring the San Yat-Sen memorial park. There is a really nice outdoor amphitheater we happened upon, and someone told us there’d be a concert the next day. Since it had been cheaper to buy year long passes to the park than to even by a day pass, we could come back for free and we were even told that we could get into the concert for free. So we rented a bus and all headed up to the park at around four in order to look around and save seats, etc. But the bus that came could only hold ten, whereas we’d wanted one to hold about fifteen. And even then, twenty two people showed up!! So the bus had to make two trips and some people grabbed a taxi. I went on the first bus ride. After arriving at the back entrance (the bus driver got a little lost and took us around a different way) we flashed our cards and totally made it in! We were really thrilled since the concert was supposed to cost 80 yuan, which is something like 12 dollars. So we set up our blankets and settled in, but it got pretty boring cause there really wasn’t that much to see just in the amphitheater. And by five thirty I was also really really hungry. So Greg (this guy from Colorado who is into violins, Audrey Hepburn and is a return missionary from England-mandarin speaking) and I went out of the amphitheater and looked around the park for something good to eat. A lot of the places looked closed, so we had to go further and further away. We stopped at a few convenience store type things, but the only warm food they served was corn on the cob and all the meats were just packaged things hanging on the walls at room temperature. There were bags with pig intestines, whole ducks, chicken feet, chicken wings, etc. They all looked cooked and then vacuum sealed, but I still didn’t feel like eating anything like that. So we continued on and found this one place that had two people eating in it, so we went there and ordered a really yummy noodle dish. But as they were making it, it looked like they were trying to close as well. They pulled down these garage door looking things over all of the entrances except one mini one, and so we felt kinda bad sitting there eating. But the Chinese people thought we were really nice and didn’t mind us being there. So after eating we headed back to the amphitheater, only to find out that they wouldn’t let us back in with only our passes!! They said that after 6 you needed a real ticket to get in! But luckily some other guys we knew were stuck out there too, and they had made friends with this Chinese guy Michael, and he somehow managed to get four tickets (for free) from the ticket lady! Only problem is that there were six of us, not four. But he was like, don’t worry, we’ll just hand them the four tickets and they’ll let us all in. So we tried it, and they people totally just laughed at us and let us in!!!!!! Lol, China is soo different from the US. The show was absolutely amazing and totally Chinese, so it was a great cultural experience. Tons of beautiful dancing and a variety of styles of singing, it was awesome! I'm so happy to be in China!
Love,
Brooke

September 12th

Everyone,

I’m in China!!! It has been almost a week now, and I’m really loving it! I have own apartment now that I share with two other girls- Juliana Murray from Washington DC, and Geneva Scaife from Washington State. Juliana I knew from my year of Chinese studies at BYU, and Geneva is a new friend I’ve made since. Juliana is 23 and pretty spunky, and Geneva is 25 and super super spunky! I love them both am excited to be here! School started Monday and is a little challenging, but mostly fun. I like that I’m improving my Chinese in school and outside school. I do hang out with many other foreigners from the program, but I’m hoping to make some new Chinese friends soon! Geneva and I had a really fun time walking around an alley near where we live and chatting with a lao ban (store owner) who was manning a fruit stand. He seemed to think my Chinese was pretty good, but alas, Chinese people always say that because they try to be nice to the people who will give them money. Geneva tries to contradict my statement, but since she’s still a beginning Chinese-speaker, she has not yet realized how much I need to improve. But I did have a nice and fairly long conversation, which was really really fun!! I haven’t been speaking too much Chinese lately because of all the need to settle in and start school, but I’m sure I will have plenty of opportunities in the very near future. So in case anyone was wondering, I haven’t gotten sick yet or eaten any extremely weird things. My favorite foods here have been baozi ( a steamed bun with meat or vegetables inside), which are usually only five mao apiece (which translates to 7 cents!!!), and beef in soup with noodles, which is usually about 87 cents. And two baozi or a bowl of beef noodle soup totally fills you up!!! So on average, I spend less than five dollars on a whole days worth of food (drinks are a little more expensive…which means about 40 cents). Pretty funny huh? So when I went to a night market and finally bargained some earrings down to 20 yuan, I felt like I was splurging major!! But in actuality, that equals a little less than 3 dollars… and they are nice earrings! So life is different here, but some things are the same. Phones are expensive (I have to buy a new one because my old one from America doesn’t work here, and it cost me 430 yuan for a phone, a sim card, and 650ish minutes, roughly cost me 62 dollars), housing is semi-expensive, as are some items like foreign shampoo and snicker bars. But a bus ride cost about 28 cents on average, my text books were like five dollars, and my friend bought a Chinese to English pocket dictionary for 75 cents!!! So things are pretty cool J I also bought a really cute skirt for about 6 dollars and a tailored tai chi outfit (for my tai chi class!) for 20 dollars! It’s pretty sweet. Well, sleep time so peace out and keep it real!
Love,
Brooke

First Blog

Hey Everyone!!
This will be where I post things from now on, so I hope you all like it! Love you all and miss you much! Pics and more will be coming soon!
Brooke Smith