In the first 48 hours in Beijing...

• I've seen the AQI (air quality index) go from 25 on what my friend said was the "clearest day in Beijing he's ever seen" to a pretty smoggy 250 (but I know that's not as bad as it could be!)
• Visited the 798 art district with my friend Jason who is DJing a benefit event on the weekend - pretty cool stuff except Jason kept telling me how it went from being a haven for avant garde artists to just another commercialized tourist spot.
• Tried Peking Duck (it was cheap, but good). I also discovered my horrible skills at Chinese chopsticks, which I hear are thicker and heavier than Korean/Japanese ones. I mean, I already suck at chopsticks as it is, but this will be good training I hope.
• Spent 3 hours in the Forbidden City - they really weren't kidding when they said city. I was expecting something like the Imperial Garden in Tokyo, but as my friend Ning said - in China, bigger means more power. With giant halls for the emperor to change clothes, have tea, even rest on his way to the gate (because it would haven taken nearly an hour to walk to the entrance - it was that big),  I was pretty impressed, but I've heard the Summer Palace is prettier, so I think I'll have many other moments when Beijing will take my breath away. Also want to hit up the temples - yeah, you know I'm a sucker for temples. 
• Watched Kung Fu Panda in 3-D - awesome!
• Tried to take a cab on my own - only to have the driver say I could walk to where I was trying to get to, according to the little Chinese that I knew. I smiled, said OK, and started walking to the direction he pointed to. It actually took almost a half hour and I constantly asked people along the way for directions to make sure I was right - most people kept saying they weren't from Beijing (I think) but somehow I found my way. First use of Chinese in China - it's always a little nervewracking at first, maybe even more embarrassing to oneself, but fun too. Brought back memories of last summer - and my first time using Japanese was in a cab too! Looking forward to using the foreigner's card to mess up in Chinese as much as I can this summer :)

(OK I lied about posting a list of goals. I made a list, which I thought was pretty solid, except that I couldn't think of any for China. I'm become more and more aware of how biased I am toward Japan - on my four-stop flight to Beijing (yes, four stops and a total traveling time of 32+ hours), I got a chance to swing by Narita again. And I almost ... didn't want to leave? Maybe it was just hearing Japanese again that soothed me (or even the minor dread of stomach upset and comparative uncleanliness I expected of China), but I couldn't help grinning like a kid as I strolled around the airport. Oh well, I know I'll have a year in Japan soon enough, so this was really all irrational thinking...)

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Why am I doing this?

If you would have asked the freshman me if I was going to study abroad for even a term at Yale - and Japan of all places - I would have laughed. Why go now when I have everything I want here? My friends, my major - heck, even my job - made my sophomore year one of the most awesome years out of the near twenty years of my life. Taking a year off also meant I wouldn't graduate with the closest people to me at Yale. But I guess I started thinking about it seriously after my summer in Japan last year - I had made leaps and bounds in learning Japanese, but I knew I still had a long way to go. Learning Japanese was, at first, just a fun thing for me freshman year, a way to fulfill Yale's foreign language requirement, and an excuse to apply for Yale's super generous Light Fellowship. But even three months in Japan changed my views on faith/religion, culture, and identity - so how much could an entire year bring? I also wanted to break the barriers of overbearing overpoliteness and stoicism that all too often characterize the Japanese people - and form legitimate relationships, which is a challenge in a country that limits intimacy to only the closest of people. A summer wasn't enough to do that, and maybe a year is pushing it too, but as I flew out of Narita last summer, I knew I wanted to go back and try.

Not to mention the fact that my academic interests almost require mastering East Asian languages - was I learning languages to be able to research religious texts or did I start studying religion as an excuse to learn languages? Ha, either way, I'm already running through ideas for my senior thesis (crazy!) and am legit excited about exploring Western religious movements in East Asia - but if I'm serious about grad school, I'll need to know not only Japanese, but at least classical Japanese, modern Chinese, and classical Chinese - oh yeah, also French and German to do "scholarly research" by early philosophers. But let's focus on Japanese/Chinese for now.

Last, but not least, when are you ever going to have the chance to live in a foreign country for a year with no strings attached? Well, actually, I know the Japanese program I'm attending will be INTENSE, but I'm promising myself that the majority of my time in Japan will NOT be spent shut up in my apartment memorizing kanji. Many, many thanks to Light Fellowship for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - I want to travel, I want to meet people, I want to try new things ... and go clubbing hehe. The possibilities are endless. And I think five years from now, that one year off won't seem like such a big deal - I have so much more to gain than lose.

So the breakdown of my year and a quarter in Asia - three months in China at the Harvard Beijing Academy and Sept. to June 2012 at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Studies (IUC) in Yokohama. It's not like I think everything will be one big party abroad - I know I'll experience times of loneliness, missing people at Yale, and burnout from four-hour language classes everyday. Um, I haven't arranged housing in Japan or even bought my plane tickets to Tokyo yet - but who cares because I know I'm going!!

Next posts - a finalized itinerary (hopefully) and some goals (because I suck at setting goals). Thanks for reading.
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