I’ve spent a little less than a week here in Beijing, and so far it’s been a great trip. Although it’ll take a few more days to completely get over the jet lag, I’ve still been able to get around the city a bit. Yesterday we (Me, Ben, Yaoyi and her mom) went to Beihai Park, using a paddle boat to make our way around the lake, and then climbing the hill to reach the White Dagoba situated on top.

After that, we walked to Jingshan Park, and climbed another steep slope that overviews the Forbidden City from behind. However, I’m not quite sure if I preferred the view, or the stronger winds on top of the hill that provided a welcome respite from the sticky, mid-90 degree weather.

I’ve also managed to avoid eating anything that could upset my digestive functioning, which is more than I can say for my last trip. Hopefully that trend will continue for the time being, as it makes Beijing a lot more enjoyable.

Tomorrow, I head to the airport for what will be a long day of flights.  My departure is at 10:30 EST in GRR, and I’ll arrive in PEK at 22:30 local time.  That’s about 24 hours of travel time, which is a bit grueling.  Nevertheless, I’m extremely excited to see Yaoyi, and visit Beijing for the second time.

As of right now, access to Facebook in China is restricted.  Consequently, if you need to get in touch, the best way would be via e-mail, at any of my addresses.  However, I should still be able to post here on Street Static, and will do my best to keep updating (time permitting).  The good news for everyone that follows Street Static on Facebook, is that in theory all the posts I make here should automatically be imported into Facebook.  Let’s just hope that holds true while I’m in China.

After putting it off for longer than I should have, I finally migrated alutz dot com to a new web host.  There was one reason for the change: Money.  Hostmonster did a great job of hosting my site for a year, but their increased their prices since I originally signed up with them.

So, I decided to go with 2MHost, which offered the right balance of storage/bandwith and cost.  And if I’m not mistaken, they’ve been hosting my friend Sean’s personal site for a while now too.  Now all that’s left is to transfer email accounts, and everything should be set to go for another year.

While I’m not in school, I try to continue my language studies as much as possible.  I use a couple of website to do this that touch on different areas of language learning.  An added bonus is that they’re both free, so you don’t have to waste money on expensive programs like Rosetta Stone.

Livemocha
www.livemocha.com

If you want to begin learning a language, start here.  Livemocha offers an interface similar to Rosetta Stone, using pictures coupled with words to promote language immersion.  It contains courses for just about every language you could want to learn.  There’s also the opportunity to connect with native speakers, and other users that are learning the same language as you.  I used this for a bit when beginning my Mandarin studies, and was very impressed.

LanguageGuide
www.languageguide.org

LanguageGuide is a great site if you’ve already gotten down the basics of a language, and want to start adding to your vocabulary.  It’s a nonprofit site that uses volunteers to put together vocabulary lists for 13 languages.  The lists are grouped topically, which is great for learning a lot of words at once.  It’s interface displays pictures of multiple objects, and then speaks the words and displays it’s spelling as you rollover the picture.  Say I was learning about Kitchen words in Spanish, and rolled-over a picture of a refrigerator.  A sound clip would play with a native speaker saying “la nevera”, and the spelling of the word would be displayed as well.  I’m currently using this site to add to my Mandarin vocabulary, and it’s working quite well.

China Excursion/Tourist Visa

Last summer, I had the opportunity to work at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  I worked as a Camera Assistant at the Handball competition.  During the course of my job, I met a pretty cool girl named Yaoyi.  One thing led to another, and before I left China, we decided to start a relationship.

Since then, we’ve been doing the long distance thing, and I’m pretty sure I’ve logged more Skype hours than average user.  Yaoyi was able to visit me this February, which meant that it would be my turn to travel to Beijing to visit her for the summer.  The seeds of this trip were planted over a year ago, and I began serious planning for it probably during early March.

Well today, the final step in that process was completed, as I received my passport with the Chinese Visa pictured above inside.  I’ll be traveling there from July 12-August 11, staying in Beijing for most of my trip, and maybe heading to Hainan for a week.

Getting the visa was actually pretty simple, thanks to the help of Oasis China Visa, a company that acts as a visa agent if you can’t travel to the Chinese Embassy.  I sent them my passport, visa application form, and passport photos on May 1, praying that USPS would get my package there intact.

Fortunately, Oasis China Visa has an online tracking system, which meant that I could confirm that my passport was in their possession.  I was a bit worried about getting the visa, as China recently tightened visa rules due to the swine flu outbreak.  But today I received my passport with visa inside, and I’m not complaining about an 11 day turn around.

God’s Plans

A year ago, I would’ve never imagined that I would be heading back to China for another visit after the Olympics.  Not only that, but that the motivation for my trip would be to visit my wonderful Chinese girlfriend.  In fact, when I reflect upon my trip and subsequent relationship, I can’t help but see the hand of God at work.  Here’s just a few of the reasons where the impossible became possible:

1. When I applied for the Olympics job, I was an underclassman and under-qualified.  The chances were small, but somehow I managed to secure a position.
2. Yaoyi turned down a chance to work at the Olymics the first time she was offered a job.
3. When Yaoyi was starting to question her decision, she got a second offer to work, and took it.
4. We both ended up being assigned to the Handball venue to work.
5. On a day that I wasn’t at work, Yaoyi and I ended up being assigned to the same working hours, which also meant we had the same down time.
6. After we decided to start a relationship, our only plan was for me to come visit her in Beijing the next year.  I can now say this would’ve never worked.
7. Yaoyi ended up being able get a US Tourist Visa, a very difficult task for a single, young, and cute (if I do say so myself) Chinese girl.
8. We were able to spend almost all of February together, and even managed to squeeze a trip to Michigan in, and Yaoyi met my family.

There’s a lot more of these small pieces to the puzzle, that when put together, create a breathtaking picture of God’s goodness, faithfulness, and plans.  I’d like to share each and every little puzzle piece, but there isn’t enough time or space here to do that.

I actually started this post off intended to simply share my visa agent experience.  But I guess God works in mysterious ways.  So where does this leave everything?  Well for one, I’m excited to go see Yaoyi, and visit Beijing for the second time.  I’m also reminded again of Jeremiah 29:11, and of the beautiful stories God is writing in our lives each and every day.

I finished up exam week last week, which means that my Morrowind Challenge is now over.  In all, I studied for approximately 6 hours, and probably played Morrowind for about 7 hours, which means I successfully took on the challenge.  The great thing, is that I think it actually motivated me to study a bit, because I had something entertaining to look forward to once I finished studying.

Anyways, now the summer is here, which means looking for a part time job.  Also, I’ll soon update about summer travel plans, once I get them finalized.  As always, stay tuned for more to come.

A few weeks ago, a buddy of mine and I joked that it’d be funny if instead of studying for exams this year, we just played Morrowind.  However, not wanting to fail my exams, get kicked out of school, and receive and earful from my Dad, I decided that this great idea of ours would have to evolve into something else.  Something more refined, balanced, and grander.  Something like the Morrowind Exam Week Study Challenge.

Here’s the deal.  For the uninitiated, Morrowind is a single player role-playing game, which a massive world and tons of quests and monsters to slay.  I started playing it last semester, but haven’t gotten to play it since.  Enter the study challenge.  The rules are simple: For each hour that I study for exams, I have to spend an equal amount of time playing Morrowind.  So, study 1 hour for Chinese Language, play 1 hour of Morrowind.  Easy, no?  This probably won’t be a big deal, until I tackle my Spanish Linguistics exam, for which there will be lots of vocabulary and concepts to memorize.

Alright, so at the end of the week, I’ll update you on how much time I spent studying, and then hopefully the equal amount of time that I roamed the wild world of Morrowind.  Let’s just hope that I don’t have to spend an obscene about of time battling cliff racers as a result of a half thought out pact I made with a friend.

I did it.  As of this afternoon, alutz dot com was officially updated with new content, along with a bit of site restructuring.  The whole look of the site remains largely the same, so anyone who’s visited before won’t notice any huge cosmetic changes.  The biggest thing I did was reorganize my site along two major lines: experience and content.  My experience highlights with video, audio, and the web can now be found under the “Media” section, while most of my projects can be found under the “Stories” section.

In addtion to the radio content I’ve had posted for a while, I’ve added a couple of writing samples.  I also have uploaded the documentary I shot last fall, about digital music stealing.  The film turned out alright, although the audio quality in one of the interviews is a bit lackluster.

So what does the future look like for alutz dot com?  Well, I’m always looking to expand, and share my experiences.  In addition to having studied media for the past three years, I’ve also continued to study Spanish.  I’m considering taking this in two directions.  One would be doing a full Spanish translation of alutz dot com into Spanish, which would bring some new exposure to my site.  The other way I’ve thought about taking this would be to create an entirely original site in Spanish.  But that idea is simply that at this point, an idea.

I’ll also give you a list of phrases that reflect some of the features or additions I’d like to add sometime within the next few years.  Here it is, take it or leave it: Chinese section, language teaching tools, picture blog, student travel tips.  However, given my past track record with providing updates, these may or may not come to fruition.  It’s just some of the things I’d like to do if I had more free time.

I have three weeks down here in Kentucky, and then I’m headed home to Michigan for a while.  And I’m definitely looking forward to being back in the Great Lakes state again.  It’s been nearly two years since I’ve spent more than a few weeks there, so it’ll be nice to be back.  In the mean time, enjoy this new update, and look for more down the road.

Microsoft’s Excel has served as the main way I’ve budgeted for the past year or so.  And although it did a decent job, I just didn’t have enough knowledge of the program to make it into a full-fledged budgeting solution.  But I didn’t want to pay for Quicken, and really don’t need something that robust.  So today I began searching for a free program, and think I’ve stumbled upon one.

Buddi is an open-source budgeting program, that runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. At first, I was a little put off, because the interface in OS X is a bit clunky.  But after playing with it for about an hour, I’ve got it ready to roll.  All I had to do was enter in starting balances for my bank accounts, and then set up categories for my monthly budget.  Now I just have to enter in transactions from here on out, and Buddi will take care of the rest.  It’ll generate reports that’ll track actual income and expenses against your planned budget, which is what I was trying to do in Excel.

Budgeting has been a great way for me to realize how I tend to spend my money.  And for those of us in college who don’t necessarily like to worry about money, Buddi is a simple way to at least start tracking where our scarce resources go.

Visit Buddi’s Hompage.

As most of you know, I’m pursuing a Media Communication (as well as Spanish) degree at Asbury College.  For a while, it had been my plan to concentrate my studies in the area of film, and head out to L.A. for my last semester.  Well, after doing some reflection, thought, and prayer, I’ve decided that this isn’t the best direction for me.

So what does this mean?  Well, I’m still a Media Communication major, but I’ll be switching from a film emphasis to a production emphasis.  On paper, the change isn’t too huge.  It’s about four classes different, and won’t even be noted on my diploma.  And I’m still on track to graduate in December 2009.  However, next semester I’ll be staying at Asbury instead of heading to L.A.

I’m still extremely excited to work in the media after graduation, it’s just that I see myself in a different capacity now.  I like the organization and management of production, rather than the camera work, lighting, and directing that goes along with film making.  So in short, that’s why I decided to make the change.

On a side note, it looks like that the major update I promised about at the end of my last post is about to be launched.  I’m still working on fixing and smoothing out the new and improved “alutz dot com”.  But hopefully I’ll be able to get it up and running by next week, as I’ll have a good portion of time off for Spring Break.  Keep your fingers crossed.