Greetings from Beijing!
After a long year of classes and exams, revelry and shenanigans, what do we Saybrugians do in the summer? We keep working and partying, of course! All over the world! From Barcelona, Croatia, London, and Paris, to South Africa, Japan, Ecuador, and Buenos Aires, we truly are a worldly bunch.
Along with fellow Saybrook 2012er, Tory Jeffay, I’ve been studying intensive Chinese at the Harvard Beijing Academy. While weekdays are largely spent holed up in classrooms and dorm rooms studying exorbitant amounts of Chinese vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, we use our free weekends to wander and explore the great city of Beijing. There’s no better way to understand Chinese culture than by hacking through the “Great Firewall” with Yale VPN, bartering for $2 polos at the Silk Market, going deaf listening to Beijing Opera (Jing Ju), or getting carsick and puking multiple times over the side of the Great Wall (Asian drivers…). And there’s no better way to practice your Mandarin than by chatting up the natives at clubs in Chaoyang or Sanlitun, or yelling at the barber after he failed to understand the meaning of the words “buzz cut.”
I’ve been here two and a half weeks now, and I’m already sleep deprived—but in a good way. Like at Yale, the motto here is “Work hard, play harder.” Who knew a Harvard program could be so much fun?
Probably cause half the kids here are Yalies.
