A Beautiful Blur

I don’t know where the time has gone. It’s all a blur…I guess I must be having fun. A shoutout to the Chadha family who may end up reading this post because my mom feels my inactive blog is worth attention. I sort of gave up updating this blog but I decided to put up a post in the interest of the possible audience.

So a day in the life of Amy Burns in Beijing starts at 7 AM when she wakes up with the sun and then relapses back to sleep until waking again at 8:15AM when her alarm goes off. She leaves her apartment by 8:40AM and walks to the subway station 5min away to make the 40min commute to the Roots&Shoots office located in the Beijing City International School. At the office, she usually has documents to translate, pamphlets/brochures to design, and projects to help organize, like the trip at the end of this month where we will take fifteen migrant children out to a wetland to learn about this important ecosystem. Everyday we eat a vegetarian lunch in the office made by us interns. We take turns. Lots of tofu. I can’t complain for 10kuai a meal. At 5:30pm I leave the office and either head back to the apartment or to Sanlitun to eat dinner with friends. The day ends with me studying for the GRE. Great strategy to falling asleep.

Highlights since my last post:

• Meeting people from all over the world from all different fields. Have made an amazing group of friends.
• Small world moments…Hong Kongers, especially HKISers are everywhere. I bumped into Justin and Charlotte on the aircraft carrier (see below), Chris on the subway, Bianca in the mall, and met this guy called Quinn in an art gallery who lived in HK for 3 years, has family at Gtown, and turns out to be friends with two of my friends I just recently met here.
• 24/7 convenient stores are everywhere. Amazing. You get pretty hungry when you dance until the sun rises
• Taking a 3hr bus to Tianjin to party on an old soviet aircraft carrier. The so-called “rave” was actually pretty lame but the bus ride there and back was a lot of fun.
• I am a member of Melody KTV. Enough said.
• I can walk & take the subway everywhere. Loving the reduction of my carbon footprint.
• Visiting a landfill for the city of Beijing was an eye-opening experience, although we actually didn’t get to see much of the trash…I think the tour only showed us the nice parts.
• Practicing Mandarin daily in the office。
• Visiting an organic farm and coming back laden with fresh produce.
• Meeting local musicians at the Lohas Green Music Festival where I helped table at and local graffiti artists through Paul. Got to see a guy spray paint a car。Exciting.
• Bird watching in the city. Who would have thought?

Downers:

• You are always sweaty and there’s nothing you can do about it.
• I am getting tired of the taste of boiled water… -_-
• China’s firewall doesn’t like Gmail and with Facebook being banned as well, I feel like I have lost a very essential part of my being…Okay, so I exaggerate, but it’s still pretty annoying.
• A 13 year old boy got killed in the subway last week when an escalator suddenly reversed direction and resulted in 20 people falling atop of each other. Sardines probably have more room in a can than commuters in Beijing trains during rush hour. It can be a bit terrifying.
• I had to go to the visa office 4 times to get my visa renewed. Success after my old visa has been expired for 2 weeks. Not my fault.
• The ATM ate my ATM card.
• Taxi drivers frequently refuse your business and leave you stranded and feeling quite helpless.
• People still litter. But there has been progress! There are recycling bins everywhere (although I don’t think anyone really knows what they’re for…) and signs everywhere promoting a “clean Beijing”. One day.

Pictures (wished I liked taking pictures ><):

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