Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world. -Napolean Bonaparte, describing China as a sleeping dragon
We’ve arrive and settled in a bit. Our apartment is very nice (too nice, really) and someone comes and cleans and does the linens for us, which is very convenient. I’m not sure how I’d dry something as big as sheets anyway as we do not have a dryer.
We live in the Chaoyang part of town, near Sanlitun. The apartment is near the famous CCTV building, which the locals apparently refer to as “Big Underpants” or “Big Boxers”. What’s even crazier is that the building right next door was fire damaged in 2009 due to some fireworks incident and it is still standing awaiting renovation. The upside for me is that it is an easy landmark that I can use to navigate.
Overall it is going well; I’m adjusting to the lousy air and discovering where I can find good restaurants. I’ve tried the subway, which only costs $0.25, and am getting proficient with getting around by cab when I can’t actually speak the driver’s language. It’s cold here but you can tell that warmer weather is just around the corner.
NOTE: This is a repost due to some unexpected downtime.
I take off tomorrow for Beijing: 1.5 hours Pittsburgh to Newark, 13+ hours Newark direct to Beijing. We’ll be flying over the top of the earth, right over the North Pole. I hope to read and sleep the entire time; I’m pretty good on a long flight, but I’m still hoping for an empty row to stretch out in!
I start my internship at the Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship on Monday, so I have a couple of jetlagged days to figure out how to get there by subway. I’ve been told we have a 2 bedroom apartment in Sanlitun, which is kind of an ex-pat (ex-patriots = people living abroad) neighborhood full of people from places other than China. The upside is that the shopkeepers and cab drivers will speak English (and I hold out hope that I’ll find Diet Mountain Dew there). The downside is that it is slightly less authentic China, and also you do pay a premium for the the comforts of an expat neighborhood. As for my Mandarin, I’m still at ‘this cat is black” so I’m hoping to improve that a little. I did manage to get Chinese characters on my computer, though.
I am headed to China again, but this time for 5 months (March – July). My previous exposure to China was a 3-week trip in 2007 (see these posts), but only for 3 weeks. This is also my second foray into living abroad as I lived in India in 2008 for 4 months. Many are joking that I need to hit Brazil and Russia next to complete the famous BRIC of emerging markets. I’ll be living in Beijing, but I’m not sure what neighborhood yet. I’m also not quite sure what I’ll be filling my time with, but I’ll figure that out very soon.
I’ll do my best to update this blog (although it can be tricky to blog from China) with many pictures and descriptions of my daily life. I hope to visit some other parts of Asia as well. Most interesting to me with be getting the Chinese perspective of some of my favorite interests: microfinance, social enterprise, and renewable energy.
Taking the train to Chicago is pretty cool. You have plenty of legroom, you can spend all of your time hanging out in the lounge car, and you get to eat dinner with strangers. In general, it has a nice old-school feel to it, with freedon to roam about and nobody rifling through your bags or asking you to remove you shoes. Of course, it takes as long, or longer, than driving so if you’re in a hurry it’s not a great choice. I could also see myself getting pretty sick of it after a few days, but the folks in the lower level of the lounge were making the best of it on my trip home, complete with guitars and singing.
I have recently embarked on a fair amount of camping in the first national park, Yosemite, and at Itasca State Park, head of the Mississippi River.
Yosemite was huge and totally developed. There was a shuttle bus every 15 minutes to take you everywhere, including the deli, the pizza restaurant, the visitor center, the gift shop, the hotel, or the campgrounds. So we sort of accidentally decided to hike up 2700 feet over 3.4 miles to the Upper Yosemite Falls. It was grueling and awesome. The best part (other than reaching the top) was running into a bear on the way. There was a sign in the campground saying “There have been 6 incidents involving bears in this camground this week.” THIS WEEK! The threat of bears in our campground did not stop us from having a cooking extravaganza every non-raining night.
Itasca was much more chill. Unlike national parks, state parks tend to be rather dead when you go early in the season on a weekday. We were basically the on people staying in the park, which was great because we just used another empty cabin’s fire ring when it turned out our cabin didn’t have one. It also turned out that our cabin didn’t have internet access as promised, so the only work I got done was reading and hiking, but I can’t really complain about that. We did manage to stand over the Mississippi River, a tradition at Itasca.
Today was my last day at GreenMango and this is my last night in Hyderabad. It’s been an amazing experience and the staff of GreenMango has been absolutely awesome. I took a lot of pictures with people of the past few days, which will help me to remember them, but to be honest I could never forget this experience. Sharing food at lunchtime; taking timelapse videos that catch coworkers skipping English class; learning that Praveena is actually quite a tomboy, Neha quite the rebel, and Uma quite the joker; practicing my poor Telugu; making plans for the trick chair with Khadeer; seeing all the ladies top the sales performance; reaching 15,000 forms; coffee 5 times a day from Lakshmi; 2nd breakfast; Hyderabad 10K; deciding whether my toy auto driver is drunk or just on bad roads; everything. Everyone wants me to come back to go to the Hyderabad 10K next November. We’ll see…..
Yesterday I celebrated Eid (2nd Eid, really, but I’m not going to pretend like I understand the Muslim festival calendar) with my friend Neha and her family. It was not a very big affair, but I did have biryani and a lot of sweets. We also went to Golconda Fort, a famous tourist spot in our town of Hyderabad, because Neha lives right next to it. It was once the domain of some king or prince and now is a big, cool area to take a break from the city and surround yourself with space and green. Other than repeatedly being asked if people can take pictures with me, it was a nice afternoon outing. When we returned to Neha’s, her sisters did Mehendi (henna) on my hands as a part of the celebration. Neha has completed college and works at GreenMango with me. Her sisters (who look like twins but are not) are pursuing engineering and biology degrees. Despite the fact that their father passed on (making Neha the sole income-earner at 20 years old), their mother insists the girls keep going to school. Neha’s mom is my hero for the week.
Today I walked part of the Hyderabad 10K with my coworkers, mostly just to promote our company. It started with a group warmup and a live band, followed by the start of the race. There were serious runners vying for serious prize money, but most people saw it as something fun to do on a Sunday. Like many participants, we had no intention of completing the race. I think we maybe completed 2K and in that distance I saw participants buying and eating ice cream and stopping for chai. During and afterwards, the band played patriotic songs and the crowd danced and drank water and tried to get noticed by the camera for the big screen. As a white girl with a clearly Indian company, I stood out a little. I was interviewed by 2 local news stations (I don’t have a TV so I don’t know if I actually got air time). Hopefully it’s all good press for GreenMango. It was sure fun for those of us who turned out.
Other parts of the race were pretty much the same as what I’ve seen in the US. There is a lot of corporate sponsorship and corporate groups running together. This particular event was the first major public event in Hyderabad since the recent events in Mumbai, so there were moments of silence and words of support for everyone there. I was impressed that the event had a large turnout despite the Mumbai attacks.
We’ve arrive and settled in a bit. Our apartment is very nice (too nice, really) and someone comes and cleans and does the linens for us, which is very convenient. I’m not sure how I’d dry something as big as sheets anyway as we do not have a dryer.
I am headed to China again, but this time for 5 months (March – July). My previous exposure to China was a 3-week trip in 2007 (see 
