It’s been a month in Beijing already. We have finished taking our finals for the first part of Chinese. I think it went smoothly! There was an oral and written section. Through this final, I’ve bonded with a lot of my classmates. We were pretty nervous. Incidentally, for the Political Science class, a group of friends and I studied well into the night for the three essays we have to write. However, I’m feeling quite confident about all the intricacies involved in the different levels of Chinese government.
For a full month, I’ve been involving myself in the Beijing Ultimate community. I went to a pick-up game the first week and got many connections to other Ultimate happenings in the city. Now I’m involved in the weekly Summer League that plays near the 798 Arts District. Also, I have gotten close with so many of the players here since the community is so small. Many of the frisbee players here are expats, but they speak fluent Chinese because they’ve been here so long. Quite a lot are locals though who were introduced to frisbee mainly through their colleges. I’m so happy about the sport expanding outside of the U.S.!
I’ve had so much Peking duck. A very famous restaurant in Beijing is called QuanJuDe, it was one of the first restaurants to sell this famous dish. Pictured below is a couple of chefs preparing the duck right in front of us!
This weekend, my roommate and I are going to Shanghai for our mini-vacation! We are living in an AirBnb that we booked prior to leaving for Beijing. We knew we wanted to go to Shanghai before departure because we were told we would have an opportunity to go on a weekend trip. I hope to go to the Bund, a famous attraction in Shanghai.
![](https://sites.northwestern.edu/ipd-china/files/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-10-08-at-4.15.49-PM-14mw8rm-222x300.png)