Retrospective Overview of HBA (aka. The Reference Guide for Future Light Fellows)

Teachers:
The purpose of HBA is first and foremost to teach Chinese. As a result, classes will dominate a larger portion of your life than you might like and teachers become really big parts of your summer life. Lucky for us the HBA teachers are really dedicated and fun. They were a combination of Harvard/Yale lecturers and graduate students at Bei Yu -- the former would teach lecture classes and the latter would run just about everything else. The student-teacher ratio is something ridiculous like 1:1.5, so you get to know all your teachers on a personal level and feel really comfortable asking them anything or joking around with them. The students are all pretty much sure that our teachers work harder than us, and we appreciate them a lot for that. Our lecture teachers, Feng Laoshi and Li Laoshi, both commanded a lot of respect as well, although the former was also field director the second semester so we didn't have him as a lecturer anymore - a pity since he's the 140 teacher at Harvard and helped compile our textbook, so he has a huge amount of insight into the texts (plus he looked like a panda!). I think he plans on taking a break from HBA next year though, which is even more of a pity =*(

Host Families and Language Partners:
I've been talking about these as I went along, but in summary I found that both were both somewhat time consuming since all you do is talk to them and most of the time you'd rather spend that time catching up on sleep, but both were also really good ways to boost conversational abilities that you might not get elsewhere (including the classroom). Some other Chinese American students opted out of the Host Family since they have family in China already, and truth be told I sometimes wished I had joined them since it only felt like an extra obligation to add to an already packed schedule. But on the flip side I learned a lot from getting to spend time with a Chinese family that isn't actually related to me, my speaking skills improved a lot, and there were plenty of perks like free meals/gifts :D In short, both of these can create some unnecessary awkwardness and stress in your life, but in moderation both are also really valuable additions to your Chinese education, which should be the priority of the summer (besides having fun).

Extracurriculars:
In addition to all the other things that HBA organizes, there were also extracurricular activities such as Erhu (a chinese instrument), cooking, martial arts, singing, etc. that I neglected to mention because I personally found it more useful to spend my time sleeping, doing homework, and exploring Beijing, but they were definitely good ways for other students to take a break from classwork and learn some cultural activities first-hand. At first I participated in the dancing class, but they had too few students so it closed down =/ Hopefully it'll work in the future so that there can be more cohesive dancing acts for the Beijing Night Show.

Language Pledge:
To be honest I'm pretty sure no one in the program actually kept the Language Pledge 100% the entire summer. In a way it's impossible and not practical to do so though, and I highly doubt my language improvement was hampered in any way by the choice moments when I couldn't be bothered to keep waving my hands around and taking forever to describe something really simple or to actually get to know some of my HBA peers on a social level that's impossible with language barriers. The degree to which people violate the language pledge probably varied based on who you interacted with, but given that we all kept up with the Chinese thing for the vast majority of the time for 9 weeks, the effects were obvious and lasting -- the switch back to freely using English again after graduation was nothing short of strange, and I think all of us are going to be tossing in Chinese words into English conversation for awhile. I have to translate an unnatural number of Chinese words into English before I say things nowadays instead of the other way around... craziness...

Beijing Language and Culture University 北京语言大学 aka Bei Yu:
Bei Yu is a good campus for learning Chinese since 7,000 out of 10,000 students are foreign students coming to learn Chinese (mostly Koreans), and thus our teachers/language partners are handpicked from the remaining bunch that are trained in teaching Chinese. The campus is also relatively small compared to Yale and thus easier to navigate/all the facilities are close by. You basically only ever go to a few places on campus within a day anyway (Convention Center 会议中心, classrooms at the main building 主楼, and cafeteria 食堂).

Dorms:
We stayed in the Conference Center 会议中心, which lucky for us meant hotel style accommodations. The rooms are singles with private washrooms and daily room service (the fuwuyuans 服务员 were really nice), so it was even better than living conditions at Yale in terms of privacy and cleanliness, but they were also arranged hotel hallway-style, which makes it harder for social interaction. The latter wasn't as big of an issue since this let us focus on our studying when we needed to and we spent plenty of time with everyone else outside the dorms that it was more than enough to compensate. I'd say a bigger issue for most students was that their showers didn't drain very well.

Food:
In the beginning we mostly ate at the First Cafeteria 第一食堂 for lunch. The food there is insanely cheap (my lunches/dinners were usually 4-6 yuan for food and 3-4 yuan for beverage... coming to a grand total of about $1), but kinda greasy and heavy on starch. It closed after we came back from social study week, so our food bill accordingly increased to about 10-15 yuan for lunch and 20-30 yuan for dinner as we started eating at the restaurants above the cafeteria and in Wudaokou. A big hit among the third/fourth year guys was the Muslim Restaurant 穆斯林饭馆. In short, food in China is cheap (like everything else), and eating is the social point during weekdays/going to occupy a large portion of your time and money, so you might as well go all out and explore/eat well! :D

Transportation:
The most common mode of transportation for HBA students was taxi 出租车, which is definitely more expensive than public transportation but far more convenient. The subway and bus lines close at random times that I still don't remember, and even though their cheap you have to known where you're going and be able to figure out the charts for how to get there. Subway is much more manageable since there's only 3 lines (I think they're building more for the Olympics though), but transportation in China in general is a chaotic/crowded/hot/noisy/confusing mess that you should definitely learn to deal with if you want to fully experience China, but might not be worth bothering with regularly. Taxis are cheap compared to Western standards (10 yuan for the first 4km, 2 yuan for every km after that) and if you split it among 4 ppl it can be very reasonable. People also have great experiences talking to their taxi drivers 司机 and trying to interpret their heavy Beijing accents.

Cell phones:
While I was still home I called T-Mobile to ask for an unlock code for my cell phone and then when I got to BLCU I bought a Beijing Sim 卡 from the Friendship Store 友谊商店 (a convenience store on campus) that included a number for 60 yuan and 50 yuan per month of calling. Unlike American phones, you pay for your minutes and when they get used up you have to go buy more. If you get the plan I got though (25 cents call out, 2 cents call in, 10 cents texts), it really shouldn't be expensive -- I managed to survive on the 50 yuan per month without having to add extra. One annoying thing about taking your American phone is that it won't read Chinese text, so if anyone texts you in Chinese you won't have clue what it's saying.

Cameras:
Bring a good camera, end of story. I brought my smallest/cheapest/worst quality camera I have thinking it'd be more space efficient and less of a heartbreak in case I lost it, but there are so many great photos you'll be taking that a good camera is worth the investment.

Laundry:
The Convention Center has laundry rooms that you buy a laundry card to use, but apparently they made people's clothes bigger, didn't really dry properly, and left strange lint. To avoid that I took my laundry to this little place next to the Friendship Store every 2-3 weeks and was charged 30-40 yuan a load for the full package - wash, dry, fold. It was a bit more expensive than doing it yourself, but saved me a lot of hassle and damaged clothes.

Money:
If you can, change dollars to RMB before you get to China because it saves you the hassle of looking for ways to do it while you're here and ATM surcharges can be quite hefty. Bringing American cash to China is also a good idea since the surcharge is less than ATMs. If you need to resort to ATMs though (most likely), make sure you don't try typing in your pin number more than twice if it doesn't work or else the machine will eat your card. Also, try to take out the largest quantity possible in one go to minimize surcharges -- you'll spend more than you think you will very quickly. I have Chase instead of Bank of America like everyone else, but I just made sure I used ATMs that accept Visa and that worked fine.

Health:
Most people had stomach issues in the beginning and periodically along the way, so just make sure you get the diarrhea meds from DUH that Light provides. It's a natural thing for the body to have issues digesting things in a different environment, and it became a great source of joking by the end （满地拉肚子！）, but of course it's not fun so take care about what you eat and make sure you avoid all the sketchy things (street-side food, raw things that aren't served in a respectable restaurant, too much dairy, etc.). A lot of people also got sick the third/fourth week and then again the last week as our immune systems started failing along with our stamina, so make sure you don't jack up the air conditioning too high and remember to sleep... once in a while... =P

In terms of exercise, different people have different habits. I personally need to exercise or else I feel like a fat 没有精神 slob really quickly, and like Yale it's hard for me to motivate myself to find time for it. The first couple of weeks this was the case, and then I started running on the track outside (it's free and you won't die of heat exhaustion if you go in the early morning/late evening), but things would come up (like torrential rain for two weeks the second semester), so you have to be creative and insistent on keeping to a exercise routine - it improves your mood and concentration immensely. It also helps keep off some of the weight you will inevitably gain in Beijing what with all the cheap greasy food.

Nightlife:
My parents read this so I'm going to be vague 0=) But anyway, HBA is much like Yale in the sense of work hard play hard - the weekdays are for studying and the weekends are for exploring/partying. There is also no point to being in Beijing if you're not going to explore what people do, especially the young people/expat culture. For HBAers, the most popular districts were Sanlitun, Worker's Stadium, Hou Hai, and Wudaokou -- all of which should be described in more detail in the Unofficial Light Guide and www.thatsbeijing.com. In fact, these are both great references for a lot of things to do and see and in Beijing outside of the traditional touristy things that you should try to get around to during the day.

Overall:
HBA rocks. If you want to be good at Chinese and bad at English you should do it. Huzzah! (it's late at night... I'm starting to babble...) Ok in seriousness, I don't think it's necessary that I put into words how much I got out of this program, it's probably evident from my crazy posting all these weeks. For every ten moments I wondered why I was crazy enough to pick to do HBA this summer (aka for all the time I spent doing homework), there was also a moment where I was super grateful I made the decision I did and was learning/experiencing as much as I was. In retrospect I don't have an ounce of regret for doing HBA or going to China -- it was unforgettable, eye-opening, and enriching, all of which was made possible by HBA in conjunction with Light Fellowship. Go for it (it's worth it)!