A day in my life - My Thursdays

On Thursdays I have my second 'Government and Politics of China' lecture of the week from 13:00-14:00 at the Harvard Hall room 201.

Thereafter I head off to my second Mandarin lesson of the week at 15:00-16:30 at the Chinese Institute of Language and Arts. I spend my Wednesday nights and Thursday morning preparing for my test. The reading and writing is extremely difficult. You have to memorise a character for every word and the character is made up of many intricate strokes. The speaking is also difficult. The language is made up of 4 tones so depending on which tone you use, it means something completely different!

Some interesting things that I've learnt about Mandarin:
- In Mandarin there are no plurals and they don't use he/she - there is just one word 'Ta' (using the first tone which is flat) for both sexes
- They don't have past and future tense verbs only the current tense verb like 'run'.
- The grammar is completely different to English. For example: We would say 'Would you like anything else?'. In Mandarin, the direct translation is 'Also want other yes/no?'
- Pingyin is the is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script in the People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan), and Singapore. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and may be used as an input method to enter Chinese characters (汉字 / 漢字, hànzì ) into computers. Source: Wikipedia
- There is software to write Chinese characters in MS word which uses Pingyin then you can select the appropriate character
- With regards to the writing, there is the Traditional Chinese writing with more complicated strokes and the Simplified Chinese Writing which is simpler. The simplified writing is used more today
- There is no alphabet for the writing. Each word is made up of different strokes which originated from the actual picture of the object but you really do have to use your imagination! :)
- There are 9 common strokes used in Chinese writing, just used in different places in the character
- The general rule is to write a character starting top to bottom, left to right
- They use 'punctuation' like in English. You can put a question mark, exclamation mark, comma or fullstop

A day in my life - My Wednesdays

On Wednesdays I have my English tutoring session at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Centre (BCNC).

During my year here in Boston, I thought that I'd do some volunteer work since I am not allowed to work on a 'spouse of student' visa. I am generally not one to 'give back' - 'Self extension' as my husband calls it  - I am typically a 'Self preservation' kind of person :) Back home, with work I don't have much time to 'give back' to society. Athol is an extremely self extending person (sometimes too generous I think!), in contrast to me, so he has inspired me to try be more like him in that sense :)

This year I have the opportunity to do something meaningful and make a difference ins someone's life. I came across BCNC which is a great NGO who help Chinese immigrants here in Boston. They offer English (as a second language) lessons, amongst other services to try make life a bit easier for them since there are so many chinese immigrants who cannot speak English. I started volunteering to tutor English to chinese immigrants since November. We had 12 hours of training in October, learning how to tutor, how to manage a tutee and how to prepare a lesson plan. Tutors have to commit to two hours a week for six months. So every Wednesday I head off to Chinatown (using the same route as my Mandarin lessons) and tutor English from 12:30 to 14:30. So on Wednesday mornings I spend time preparing for my lesson. My tutee, Tina, has been here in Boston for a year now and would like to get a job in banking one day. So I am helping her with new Banking/Finance/Accounting vocabulary. It really is a great feeling, to teach someone so that they will be more confident in society.

A day in my life - My Tuesdays

13:00-14:00 - On Tuesdays I have my lecture (the first of two during the week) which I am auditing at the School of Arts and Science at Harvard. It takes me about 10 mins to walk to the Harvard Yard - walking along Putnam Street then Mass Ave. The lecture starts at 13:07 - an odd time since this makes sure that there is time for the students of the previous lecture to exit the lecture room at 13:00. The course which I am auditing is called "Government and Politics of China" given by Prof. N. Dillon. It is very interesting, I have really enjoyed it! The course began with the history of China starting with the 1920 Revolution up to the current Contemporary China. It has been interesting to hear about all the uprising over the years with the peasant and student protests and the Cultural Revolution. I was amazed to learn that there are currently only 5 official religions in China and that children under 18 years and members of the Communist Party are not allowed to belong to a religion. Media is also strictly controlled in China. Facebook and Twitter is band but they have their own versions namely Renren and Weibo. There are about 40 students in the class and is lecture-based with discussion groups afterwards.

14:30 - I skype my parents living in Joburg (the first of two during the week). Technology is fantastic! It is 21:30 in South Africa so a 7 hour time difference. It is great to see and catch up on what is happening back home.

15:00 - I meet with my good Chinese friend Juan every Tuesday for tea and a chat. I met her at the Harvard Spouse's Get-together. I enjoy our weekly chats.

A day in my life - My Mondays

I thought that I'd document in detail what my days in Boston are like. Memories are so precious, even the little things mean so much and can be so easily forgotten.

This is a description of my typical Mondays, times are just rough guidelines to give you an idea. Mondays are my Mandarin lessons in Chinatown - a nice way to ease back into the week after a nice weekend.

7:15 - I am awoken by my alarm, I wake up hubby so that he can go do some homework. I snooze some more :)

8:00 - I wake up, quickily check emails. I make coffee and breakfast - usually fruit with yogurt sprinkled cashews (bananas, strawberries, grapes sometimes pear or apple) or Raisin Bran with milk. Have breakfast with hubby.

9:00 - Check emails and what is going on in the world. Check weather since living in Boston you need to be prepared. Weather.com give hourly forecasts with temperature and a "Feels like" temperature since with wind and snow it can be colder. http://www.weather.com

9:30 - Shower

10:00 - Do Mandarin homework and learn new vocabulary for test (including writing the characters). My Mandarin private tutor, Han, gives me a test every lesson.

10:30 - Remind hubby to shower and get ready for school. Athol has a habit of being late for everything so it's my job to make sure that he gets to class on time :) I pack a lunch for him - usually a bagel with cheese, tomatoe and ham with a small carton of orange juice.

11:15 - Hubby leaves for school. I do our usual 'goodbye' wave from our bedroom window (which is on the third floor) :)

I continue learning my new Mandarin vocabulary.

12:45 - Have lunch - usually a sandwich or leftovers from supper. I take something out of the freezer for supper.

14:00 - I leave for the Harvard T walking along Putnam Road then Mass Ave or Banks Street, then Grant Street, Holyoake Street then Mass Ave. It takes me about 10 min to get the the T. I catch the train from Harvard Square (Red line)  to Ashmont/Braintree passing Central-Kendall-Charles MGH-Park Street. I get off at Downtown Crossing and change to the Orange line towards Forest Hills.The train passes Chinatown and then I get off at Tufts University which is along Washington Street. I walk along Washington Street and turn right into Kneeland Street. The Chinese Institute of Language and Arts is along Kneeland Street. http://www.bostonchineseinstitute.com/directions.shtml. About a 5min walk from the T.

15:00-16:30 - I have my Mandarin lesson with Han

16:30 - By the time I get out the sun has already set! and this is even with daylights savings of 1 hour. I go back to the T and head back home using exactly the same route as I came.

17:20 - I arrive back home after the 10 min walk from the Harvard T

19:00 - Have supper with hubby. I usually make a stew, pasta, fish with vegetables, meat pie, grilled chicken mince or chicken korma. We either chat about our day or watch a sitcom, we are busy watching Frasier.

After supper, Athol will do some homework and I will just relax, do some Mandarin homework or prepare for my English tutoring sessions. We will re-convene later in the evening for coffee/tea play some Nintendo Wii (we play tennis and baseball everyday! it's very stress-relieving and fun :) ), maybe do a crossword puzzle or discuss philosophy with my philosophical husband :) It is amazing that even after 3 years of marriage, we still laugh every single day!

We sleep pretty late here, 23:00, midnight or sometimes even 1am.

I like my Mondays :)

My first American Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday 22 November - my first real American Thanksgiving.

This is one of the most important holidays in the USA. Schools and universities were closed for 3 days Wed-Fri and businesses closed Thurs-Fri so a lovely long weekend. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Everyone goes home for the holiday - I noticed a lot of students walking with their suitcase around Harvard Square and the T.

We were fortunate to be invited to a real American Thanksgiving at the Cohens - Athol's host family when he did his MBA at MIT in 1994, he has kept in touch with them all these years. It is amazing how much effort Americans put into this holiday - cooking the turkey since 8am, setting the table and cooking side dishes and desserts. The turkey was huge, I've never had turkey (except for coldmeat in SA) so this was a treat! There was mashed potatoe, green bean salad (made with mushroom soup and with fried onion rings on the top), steamed veggies, green salads, mashed pumpkin, stuffing (this is the stuffing that goes inside the turkey which is served seperately, made with bread and other things), gravy, and of course cranberry sauce - what a feast! For dessert, there was pecan pie, apple crumble and pumkin pie. Everything so so delicious, at the end of the evening I was stuffed :)

There were 14 of us in total. Jane even made us take part in their annual Thanksgiving Quiz which was great fun. There is usually a football game on Thanksgiving so all the men usually sit around and watch the TV.

Today Thanksgiving is celebrated to remind people of their blessings so that they are thankful for them. So yes I am extremely thankful and grateful for everything in my life - my wonderful and loving husband, my family and friends and for this amazing year in the US.

Looking back into history, Thanksgiving began because the Pilgrims were very thankful for their first harvest in 1621 and so celebrated for three days. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving The food eaten is similar to that of the Native Americans, who had helped the pilgrims to cook and farm.  There is however another side to this story, the Native Americans in turn celebrate the 'National Day of Mourning' http://www.pilgrimhall.org/daymourn.htm because the pilgrims took away their land and destroyed their tradtions. So very interesting, there are always two sides to every story!

On a brighter note, yesterday was 'Black Friday' which is to mark the first day of shopping for Christmas so all stores have massive sales over the long weekend. Time is just flying by, before we know it, it will be Christmas.

What a day... Arsenal wins, Harvard beats Yale, Seinfeld Live and a visit to the Cheers Pub

Our day started off with our team Arsenal beating Tottenham 5-2 with Abedayor been sent off in the first half. Quite a rare thing these days to be a proud Gooner :)

Next we went to a Tailgate party organised by the HKS MC class at the Harvard Stadium. There was so much hype around "The Game" Harvard versus Yale - these tailgate parties start 2 hours before the game and then again after the game. Groups get together and drink beer, eat hamburgers, hotdogs, etc. The atmosphere is awesome. There is also friendly banter between the two rivals with 'Harvard sucks' t-shirts and plane banners. Two fighter jets flew over the stadium. Football is a strange game to get used to, it is similar to rugby except:
- it is more violent (not sure what exactly a foul is because it all looks so violent to me!)
- they have helmets and thick padding all over
- there are 4 quarters of 15 minutes each (with stop/start time)
- they have cheerleaders (after a touchdown they must do push-ups, whatever the score is)
- you can throw the ball forward (unlike rugby)
- there are so many players in the team, after every play (which last a minute or so) a new lot of players come on
- a touch down (like a rubgy try) gives you 6 points. There is a kick after a touch down (like in rugby) which gives you 3 points
- there are many referees (at least 6 each with a different letter on their back)
- at half time, each university gives a little performance and makes fun of the opposing team. The band will come on and play. Yale acted out a scene (with props) about the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar with an asteroid coming to hit the earth and the Harvard people were too lame to try and stop it, so the Yale people stopped it. Harvard had a whale (I guess Yale sounds like whale!) with a bulldog face (the bulldog is the mascot of Yale) and then all the Harvard people killed the whale. Both preformances were pretty lame.

The game was awesome, the final score was 34 - 24 to Harvard.

                                                Last 3 pics courtesy of our friend Winnie.

Then we went to the Wang Theater in Tremont Street in downtown Boston  to watch Seinfeld Live. He is still so funny. He made a few references to one of our favourite TV series Seinfeld. A great comedian.

Afterwards we went to dinner at the Cheers Pub, it had a replica of the bar used in the TV series.

All in all a great fun day!

The elections... pure entertainment!

The US elections were held two days ago and Obama won another 4 years in office as President. We were so fortunate to be here for the elections, I've never really followed the US elections, so this was interesting and fun to watch.

Having watched the third debate and election results, to me it seems like a big, over-the-top popularity contest, to see who can get the most "likes". I was surprised to find out that only about 100 million Americans voted - so this is only about a third of the total population! So if the winning party gets half the votes, in reality only 15% of the population voted for them and 85% of the population actually didn't. Surely a third of the population is not representative. I also learnt that not all the parties are listed on the ballot (like in South Africa where we list all 15 or so parties on a long ballot sheet), that they usually the 'top 2' - surely all parties deserve a space on the ballot sheet.

Apparently each of the top 2 parties spent about a billion dollars on their campaign - really exorbitant! espectially for a country that owes $16 trillion in debt.

The live debate reminded me of a Jerry Springer show where people are pointing the finger at others and taking stabs at each other. When Obama came out with his family to give his celebratory speech it felt like a rock concert - loud music, lights, party streamers, people jumping up and down chanting 'Four more years'. The celebration when he finished his speech was like the announcement of a reality TV show winner like Idols - balloons and party streamers all around, people coming onto the stage to congratulate the winner, etc.

I really do think that the live debates are a great way for the public to see the candidates in action. We do not have these live debates in South Africa, we really should. This really does give you a sense of the person's intelligence and ability to handle tough questions and accusations.

I suspect many people vote  based on who they like and not the policies which they believe in. I think that many people who voted for Obama last time have been disappointed but with Romney the only alternate (if he had won this would have caused a disruption in the current already-struggling government and his radical leadership is also bit unknown) they had no choice but to vote for Obama again. Similarly, many people who voted for the Republicans last time didn't want to vote for Romney so had no choice but to vote for Obama this time.

Good luck to the President, he has a big challenge ahead, with massive debt, resource shortages, frustrated citizens, China looming, natural disasters and many angry enemies.

First snowfall in Cambridge

I got off the T this afternoon at Harvard Square and I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful sight of snow. My first snow ever!

As I walked home, I watched the tiny snowflakes dance in the breeze. I haven't really seen snow before, we've only had some sleet in Johannesburg, although it snowed this year but we were here in Boston. It also snowed in September 1981 but I was only one years old so can't remember anything, luckily I have photos of my mom holding me in our garden - me wrapped up warmly in a yellow woolen poncho :)

It is still snowing, probably about 2-3 inches of snow has fallen. It is such a beautiful sight, the snow seems so bright - the reflection from the streetlights make it brighter. I guess that's how they got the saying... as white as snow! It really feels so magical, it's like we're in a Christmas card :)

 

Sandy... the aftermath

We experienced some hectic winds in Boston on Monday, but we were fortunate to have not been affected too much by Hurricane Sandy. There were leaves and some small branches on the floor but otherwise nothing serious. Several suburbs around us were without power - apparently about 230k homes in Boston.

New Jersey and New York suffered the most, with flooding, trees falling and power outages. Currently the death toll in the US is around 74. Apparently about 9m homes were without power in the US, and millions are still in the dark even after a few days. People were killed by flying debris, falling trees or electrified by loose power cables. Even people in Toronto had hectic winds of 80km/h - this shows the vastness of Sandy, making it the biggest storm ever in the Atlantic.

As the affected regions slowly recover and repair the damage, life goes on as usual for us in Boston. If the centre of the storm was further North closer to us, things would have been a different. We were very lucky.