Beijing oh Beijing

I hate to say it, but the longer I'm in Beijing the less I like it. I like it most of the time, but there are certain days when I just can't take it. I'm not sure if this is a don't like all of China thing, or just don't like Beijing. I'll have to wait and see when I visit Shanghai. But it's different living somewhere and going there for the weekend, you know?

Something that goes along the lines of getting really frustrated with this city is getting frustrated with Beida. Now again, I'm not sure if this can apply to all schools in China or just mine, but it seems that they are terribly unorginized and incapable of fixing a simple situation.

For example, on the course sign up sheet they had listed a course titled "International Financial Mangagment" which I planned to take. I go to the first class only to find out that the class doesn't start for another 2 weeks. Ok, they made a simple mistake on the course sheet, no worries. Go back 2 weeks later and there is still no class. I go to the business school office only to find out that the whole course is now cancelled.

This was the week I got up at 6am to take a flight back from Sichuan province in order to make it home in time for this class. A simple email saying, "the course you have signed up for is now cancelled due to xyz. Sorry for the inconvience." But no, I was just supposed to magically sense that the class was cancelled.

This put me in the bad position of being one class short and already being in the fourth week of the semester. I had to sign up for another class and catch up on 3 missed classes worth of material. But for some reason it wasn't bad at all to make that up...

On another point about the school, it is suprisingly easy. Beida is consistantly either the #1 or #2 school in China, year after year, yet it seems to be easy. Is this just because of the classes I'm taking? Who knows.

I got back a group paper which I thought was a pretty sub par paper, for my Operations Mangagment class today, and got a 96% -- highest grade in the class. My group didn't work that hard and wasn't really close to any of the right answers that the teacher had gone over after we turned in the assignment. In the comments she wrote that our paper was very well written and we had good use of language. This may be because Drew and I did most of the paper seeing how our European groupmates weren't confident in their grammar skills.

It's just interesting to me because I work really hard at Miami to get good grades, but over here is seems like I haven't really had to even open a book yet. I mean I'm not really complaining, but I am at the same time. I wish I was learning over here, because this is my one time to learn about China in China.

I guess this just allows me to not have to worry about schoolwork on the weekends which will allow me to travel more. I'm sure next month I'll have more stories of how annoying this city and my school can be at times. Everybody needs to vent sometimes.


At least I'm going to the Great Wall tomorrow. I'm going to the most challenging/dangerous part of the wall called Simatai. I'm going with 4 Germans in my program, should be an interesting day.


TIC.