Help from Unexpected Places

I got a second hand bike a few days ago to replace the one that got stolen and the back wheel had been making grinding noises since last Friday. After getting home about an hour ago, I decided to try fixing it using some oil that my (bello) Italian roomate Andrea had lent to me, but in my own inexperience with bikes, I flipped it upside down to try applying the oil to the underside of the back gear, and when I turned the pedal, the chain fell off and got caught on the inside of the front gear. I flipped the bike back up and tried fixing the chain by hand, but could see that I was getting nowhere.

 Not knowing what to do, I asked my apartment's security guard for help in slightly panicked Chinese with the help of a Chinese-English dictionary app that my friend from Australia, Cameron had showed me when I was enrolled in Chinese-taught classes. After the guard tried to fix it a little with his bare hands and a broomstick, he turned to me and started making statements that I couldn't understand. We worked through the language barrier (true Beijingers speak Chinese in a different dialect than standard Mandarin and have a lot of terms only used in the area) and I figured out that he was saying that he needed some tools.

 My roomates didn't have any, but I then remembered that I had brought my Swiss Army Knife that my parents had bought me in Middle school with me, so I rushed up to my apartment to get it and handed it to him. Carefully considering the tools it had, the guard took out the reamer and with a bit of straining, got part of the chain back onto the front gear. He then lifted the bike right-side up, grabbed a pedal with his hands, and told me to grab the other pedal to rotate the gear with him on the count of three. With two pushes, the chain snapped back onto the gear and was fixed!

After thanking him, I told him the original reason why I was trying to fix my bike (the wheel was still making noises); he grabbed the back wheel and frame, pushed hard with his hands, and fixed the problem in a matter of seconds. Looks like I don't need to take my bike to a repair shop anymore :)

If the guard had decided that I wasn't worth the trouble and not agreed to help, my friend hadn't given me that app after we got to know each other through a Chinese-taught class, or my parents had never bought me that Swiss Army Knife/I hadn't brought it along since I rarely use it, none of this would have happened. Thank God for modern day technology, multi-tool knives, the goodness of people, and help from unexpected places!

PKU 风雷社 Audition 2014 | Germy (Air Force Crew) | CoolAznTutorials

New video is out! Guess I'll use this space here to double as my blog post about this :)

   Last Friday was International Women's Day (国际妇女节), and I learned from other exchange students that PKU's Guanghua school was hosting a party that night celebrating the event with food and games. Being a college-aged Texan with a big appetite still not used to the relatively small meal portions served in China and pretty much the rest of the world, the words "free food" grabbed me in an instant and I went with a group of exchange students to the party later that night.

   At the party (which only had small snack foods as it turns out free meal events rarely happen in China unlike back home), we played karaoke games as the group message had stated, but what I didn't anticipate was that there were performances too. I had previously obtained information from a local friend about PKU's Hip Hop Dance organization, 风雷社 ("Wind Lightning Society", pronounced "Feng Lei She" in pinyin reading) and had found them at the club fair the week before; it turned out that they were performing for the festival as an opening act!

   While they were performing, a gymnast had a solo and started doing flares, and my exchange student friends started asking me if I could do the move too. When I said yes, one of them yelled out loudly in Chinese "We have someone here that can do that too!", to which the gymnast somewhat angrily replied "If you can do it, then do it!"

   Before I knew it, the crowd's eyes were on me and they began cheering me on to dance. I went to the center, performed the move, transitioned to some more acrobatic moves, and ended with a dynamic freeze facing their dance team, to which the crowd went wild and applauded. 风雷社 nodded in approval, then continued their performance after everyone had settled down. It felt great to dance again and see what the dancers here in Beijing were like, and I was now even more excited for 风雷社's informational and auditions, which were to take place the next day.

   Oh yea, my friend and I were still hungry after the party, so we went out for some late night Japanese food and tried fried blowfish *spoiler alert*- it just tastes like really pure tasting fish.

Le fried blowfish for $8.67 USD, because yolo right?

   The next night, I headed to the main gym for 风雷社's informational after a full day. They gave a brief description about each of the dance styles they offered- breaking, popping, jazz, and hip hop (choreography), followed by demonstrations of each style by groups of their team members along with a solo demonstration by their professional dancer that taught popping classes (they have a performance team and also host dance lessons with professionals for interested students). Immediately after the performances finished, they held auditions for their team and called my name first.

   Since I come from a (dance) battle culture back in Texas and in a battle, a dancer has no idea what song is going to be played and oftentimes doesn't recognize the song that gets played, I had told 风雷社 on my application to play any song they wanted, as long as it was a breakbeat. After shuffling through a few songs to find one, I went out and did my thing. The crowd rang with applause and the bboys took me to another room to begin my first practice session with them.

   During the performances, I had noticed that there were some very dynamic bboys who hadn't performed the day before. I approached them and learned that they were from the surrounding area, and that street dancers from the area gathered at PKU during practices to dance together- which meant that there were more bboys in Beijing than what I had just seen. I learned that they had originally come from other regions, and that there were bboys in all of the different parts of China, which widely took me by surprise. 

   When I was researching about Beijing back in America, it had been incredibly hard to find any information about the dance scene or Chinese Hip Hop culture, so I was under the impression that it was either really small or didn't exist. Yet here I was, practicing with Chinese street dancers and finding out that they have a massive scene, only unbeknownst to the Western World because of the social media cutoff. I learned that they even have their own website, "街梦网" (street dreams web) that they use to connect with each other and spread Hip Hop knowledge. During practice, one of the dancers, 大志 saw me dancing and asked if I wanted to join him for a 5 vs 5 dance competition happening in May. Looks like I'll be competing in China and meeting more members of their dance culture!

   Every day remains really busy, so I apologize for how infrequently I've been posting on this blog and appreciate your patience! Adding on to my previous post, I will be writing blog posts attached to my vlogs just like this one when an additional story needs to be told that goes along with the video, and will also post about significant days that I don't have videos for. I'm off to eat a late night dinner, so be it on this blog or on other social media, I hope to see you all again soon!

-Germy

Germy in China | Vlog | The First Week | CoolAznTutorials

My first travel vlog is out! I know that I haven't been very active on my blog for a while, and that I've now fallen behind on a sizeable number of days; keeping up with videos and writing daily blogs takes a lot of time that I thought I would have, but every day's been busy and adventurous in its own way, so there hasn't been much time to keep up.



To compensate for this, I will be maintaining my focus mainly on making vlogs with the time I have (not necessarily weekly recaps), and I will try to write posts only about particularly interesting days that I'd like to highlight and hope you might find entertaining. You can also follow me on my instagram @bboygermy or on my personal Facebook page for more immediate public updates (follow, I do not accept friend requests from people that I have not met in person.), along with liking the Cool Azn Tutorials Facebook page.



Regardless, I hope you enjoy this video recap of my first week in China and that all is well wherever you are!



-Germy

Day 3

I might always be a few days behind in writing these, so I have to think back a little

   I awoke on day 3 to text messages from the exchange student group planning to meet up at the Wudaokou subway station to eat lunch together; my roomates were still out, and my only plan for the day was to try to visit PKU to get a feel of where I would have classes, so I hopped on the bus to the west gate of Qinghua and walked to Wudaokou. Walking to the subway station, I didn't see any of the exchange students; they had planned to meet at exit B, but since I was following the road I was on, I had walked to exit A, which was across the street (I seem to have a thing for getting a little lost in China, as you'll see with my other posts and upcoming vlog)

   Crossing the street during noon in China was insane. I waited for there to be no cars, then jogged across to the midway point with some other locals, but as soon as we reached it, cars began zooming by us on both sides. The midpoint was really tiny, so some cars had to turn a little in order to avoid hitting us, and at one point a bus passed behind me really close to my back. After I crossed the street, I saw a group of Asians and Europeans that were all a head taller than me for the most part, and approached them to head for lunch.

   When we were doing introductions, one of the exchange students introduced himself as Aurelien, so I asked him if he was from France. He replied in French telling me that he was from Belgium, and we conversed in French as we walked to lunch. I learned that he had been to Texas before for school and stayed with a host family in a small town near Dallas; I was surprised how many students I'd meet had actually been to Texas and knew about Texas A&M. I also talked to Annie and Anthony from Canada, David (also from Canada who I met the day before), and Wonhyuk from Korea.

   We ended up in a Shanghainese restaurant partway between Wudaokou and PKU, and the final exchange student I met, Sean, did most of the ordering-in fluent Chinese. He was an American originally from New Jersey that had lived in Shanghai for five years and knew the owner of the restaurant, who recognized him and greeted him as we sat down. The dishes we got were many, and all were delicious!

There was more xiaolongbao (小笼包) too, but it came later

   After learning more about each other and finishing up lunch, most of the group went back to Wudaokou, while I walked with Aurelien and Wonhyuk, who were heading to PKU too for early registration. I told them that I needed to get a communication card (卡通, a prepaid card used to pay for bus and subway rides), so they brought me to PKU's East Gate subway station before we entered the university. When we reached the entrance, there were two guards, a huge metal gate, and a sign that said  "Peking University" in Chinese.

Gig 'Em 北京大学

   Walking inside, I didn't know what to expect, as image/video searching PKU and its surrounding area before my arrival had turned up with few results. Registration was in the Shao Yuan building, which also doubled as an on-campus dorm for international students, so we began our search with the help of some students on the way. After a few minutes of asking for directions, we found the Shao Yuan building.

Looks kind of like a hotel, right :p?

   When we walked in to register, there were two Chinese women that kept staring at me and Wonhyuk. We went down the hallway to register and after doing so, we went back to the entrance to discuss what to do next. I noticed that the women were still staring at us, so I stared back, and one of them came up to me to ask me my ethnicity in Japanese. When I replied in Japanese that I was Hong Kongese, we switched to Chinese and she explained that she worked for a hospital she was handing out information for and worked with Japanese patients. Wonhyuk told her that he was Korean, and she handed him a card for Korean-Chinese lessons, and we all walked out laughing. We decided to walk around PKU a little to familiarize ourselves with the campus more, and I of course took a few pictures :p

PKU's library; it's huge

Cool Asian tree (don't know the name); one of many around campus

a park on campus (I think)

One of the oldest buildings on campus

The workout equipment here is outdoors and 

painted like playground equipment

One of many cafeterias on campus; I believe it's a dumpling store

Not sure what building this one is

Life Sciences, I believe

    After walking around for a while, we exited the campus and went our separate ways. I took the bus home and ended up getting off on an unknown bus stop, but fortunately got off at the stop closest to where I live, so walked down the road to the Number 8 Mall (八号) and went home.

    No one had any dinner plans, so I decided to cook the ramen that I bought (I didn't take any pictures, but it'll be in my vlog!). It was an adventure in itself cooking the ramen, since I was using an open stove with seemingly only "high" and "higher" settings, and after I cooked it, I had to grab the bowl with gloves after transferring it because it was so hot. The ramen ended up plain because the flavoring didn't get to soak in much, and it wasn't enough for me, so I decided to try ordering Chinese KFC since they did home delivery.

   The ordering process was extremely frustrating. I had to reload their "order online" website about three times, since it randomly crashed for a while when I was putting in information to order. By the time it got working again, they were on their "midnight snacks" menu (KFC here has different menus for different times of the day), so I ordered some food and worked on my last blog post while I waited. When it arrived, I was surprised at the portions, which were a lot smaller than in America (which goes for every restaurant and probably most other countries).

Zinger Burger with soy milk and hot wings; the wings are a lot smaller than they seem

It says "Exercise every day to have a healthy life"; interesting thing to

put on a fried chicken box haha

   

When I finished eating, it was in the late hours of the night, so I finished writing what I could and headed to sleep. After all, I did need to get adequate rest for the next day, since it would be the day of my orientation into PKU! Orientation ended up being another real adventure, but that's for the next blog post :)

The Journey to China + the First & Second Days

Wow, where do I begin- so much happened over these past few days that it's all a blur

   19 hours of total flying time, 2 hour layover in Germany, and my first time ever flying alone. Needless to say, I was a little worried, but fortunately everything went pretty smoothly, besides the timing of my actions on the flights. On the way to Germany, the middle seat of my aisle was empty and the movie selection was great, but I only got to watch one film before falling asleep for pretty much the duration of the flight. When I switched planes to Air China, there was a lot less space and the movie selection was quite bad, but I was too rested from the last flight to sleep much so I ended up watching a lot of random movies just to pass the time. On the plus side, the stewardesses on the flight were pretty nice, and the passengers on either side of me struck up some short, friendly conversation, though we were all in each others' personal space and it made eye contact a little awkward.

   At about 6:30 in the morning two days from the start of my journey, I arrived at the Beijing Capital International Airport. After passing through immigration and getting my bags, I found my friend at the exit, who had answered all my questions about life in Beijing as an American and helped me find housing prior to my arrival. She got a taxi, and we headed to my apartment to meet my roomates.

   I was surprised how soon out of the airport that culture shock would happen. On the way to the apartment, there were several times that other cars and bikers drove extremely close to the taxi before speeding up to cut in front, and several times that pedestrians walked right in front of the taxi while it was still moving to cross the street. There was even a point where another taxi switched lanes on a road going two directions and headed straight towards us before switching back into his lane at the last second. While I was panicking and freaking out, my friend just laughed at me and explained that it was normal. Thinking about it, because of the sheer mass of people in the city, one has to be more aggressive and efficient with travel in order to get anywhere, and time one's movements correctly to go with the flow of traffic. She joked that as a pedestrian, one had to "deaden one's nerves" to the cars passing by so close to one's person at such high speeds.

   Moving in to my apartment, I met two of my roomates, a Vietnamese man and an Austrian girl- both grad students-who were incredibly nice and accommodating. After putting my bags down, they took me to Qinghua's West Gate and we all went out for breakfast. They took me to a traditional Chinese breakfast shop, where I ordered some xiaolongbao (小笼包) that came with fried dough and soy milk :)

   I handled a few things and got a SIM card and some groceries, then reunited with my roomates to go to one of their favorite noodle restaurants. I wanted to eat something that I'd never tried before, so I ordered a lamb and dough noodle soup, which was delicious (as you can probably tell, my tumblr is part food blog)

   I got to learn more about them through lunch and we discussed different aspects about the countries that we were from. They then showed me how to take the bus back home and though I was planning on unpacking, I ended up falling asleep for three hours since I was still tired from traveling. When I woke up, I followed my roomates outside and we walked to the number 8 mall (八号) to eat dinner and buy some groceries.

   Entering the supermarket, I was in for another culture shock. I was surprised that the market had so many international brands (we ended up buying some German chocolate wafers), but even more to my surprise, the market sold brand name clothes and home items too. There was a small section selling Nikes and a giant bed placed in the middle of an aisle, and a bedding section that we ended up checking out.

blurry, I know ><

I was also surprised to learn that here in China, some people buy "preserved milk" to drink in case they ran out of regular milk; there was a stand full of these preserved milks sitting un-refrigerated next to the snacks. I learned from my Austrian roomate that they have preserved milk in other countries too, but seeing this as an American was definitely a culture shock for me.

   After getting home, I fell asleep again, woke up late at night, unpacked, and slept past 4am; surprisingly, I got used to the mattress quickly (Chinese mattresses are firm and don't have any springs).

Day 2

My roomates told me that they were going to be out for a few days, so I thought it would be a good idea to go to the grocery store to buy some drinks and emergency food (our fridge was empty since they had recently moved back in). My Vietnamese roomate took me on a tour of the Wudaokou area on his electric bike, and then brought me to the WDK Mall before going to run some errands. Under the mall was a food court and BHG, a food market chain.

In the store, I found some pretty unique things, and walked out with three drinks and a pack of ramen for 32 kuai (about $5 USD); I could write about them all, but I think pictures with captions would be more interesting!

Whatchu know about Soda Shaq?? xP

Chinese Red Bull in different cans; they had "Burn" here too, but I didn't buy it

Bottled milk tea

Strange fish of some sort

Cakes at the in-store bakery; the green ones are shaped like roses

Candied fruit right outside the store for only 4 kuai ($0.67 USD); definitely going to

get this sometime

After buying groceries, I met up with my roomate again and we got tea from Happy Lemon, a Taiwanese Tapioca chain, then went to the top of the WDK mall to eat lunch at a Hong Kong Dim Sum-style restaurant. All the fried things had been sold out, so ironically, we only got to order one dim sum dish

Green tea with cream cheese, as seen on my instagram @bboygermy :p

Wonton noodle soup with custard buns; first time trying the buns

My roomate brought me home before heading out with my other roomate to go on their trip, so I was now home alone. I turned my computer on and started catching up with all my social media, since it was the first time I checked it since arriving, but then later fell asleep yet again because of the jetlag/tiredness. When I awoke, I checked my phone to see that the other exchange students were planning on meeting at the WDK mall and getting dinner together, so I decided to come along since I hadn't met any of them yet.

Checking Google maps, I saw that the bus wasn't going to arrive till later, so I ended up walking all the way to Wudaokou from my apartment. Dodging traffic and walking through a few not-so-clean streets, I made it to the area in 40 minutes. There was some confusion in finding them since there's two malls in the area right across from each other separated by the subway, but I ended up finding them at the WDK mall before walking back to the other mall I had been in to eat dinner. 

We ate at a beef noodle shop called "Mr. Lee's" (李先生), which looked very much like a Chinese version of KFC, and I met fellow exchange students from Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. We enjoyed the meal and engaged in an intellectual discussion about our countries' different approaches to higher education, and the extent to which capitalism affects the world. While the other exchange students decided to experience Beijing's night life after the meal, I took the bus and went home. 

Hi there, Colonel..I mean, Mr. Li

Tomato beef soup; about $3 USD and pretty good!

I'm not really sure how to end a blog post since I'm still pretty new to this, but every day here in Beijing's been eventful so far. I'm kind of behind on writing these, but I hope to have day 3 up and written a lot sooner than it took to write these two days. So much has happened already, and I know that it's only the beginning; I look forward for what's to come!

Peace ^^v

-Germy

The Future of CoolAznTutorials | Germy | China

Video I made to announce this blog and what's going on in the very near future; I fly to China tomorrow!

It is quite late at night right now, and I seem to have gotten a little sick, but still need to check over my things and make sure I pack what I need. Hopefully I won't be up for much longer, since I have a long journey ahead of me.

Stay tuned, and look out for my third post- which will be from China :)



-Germy

First Post

Hi all!

So this is my very first post on blogger. I'm still quite new to the whole blogging thing, but I think it's pretty standard for one's first blog post to be an introduction about oneself. I could write out a few detailed paragraphs about the many interesting things that I've been blessed to have experienced and achieved thus far in my life, but I think that this video does a pretty good job of summing most of it up:

A Short Introduction of my Life

As you can tell, this blog is still under construction and I'm still working on adding nice things to it; I know that I will have several interesting adventures to post about in the very near future ;)

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and welcome to my blog!

-Germy