Returnings

Well, I'm already back at home and almost settled in, so I guess it's time to finish posting about the remainder of my trip.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of our last week in Beijing were not too eventful. On Tuesday we presented our projects, which I think went fairly well. My group couldn't get the projection system to work, so we eventually just showed our powerpoint to the professors directly from my partner's laptop screen.

Wednesday was our final exam. For some reason, it seemed to include a lot more calculus than reasonable (which I suppose was good because I'm better at that than differential equations). Five or so pages of what seemed like mostly integration by parts and Taylor expansions later, I was feeling relieved, if not slightly worried about my grade. Oh well, as we all told ourselves leading up to the final, we were the guinea pigs of the program so hopefully they will go easy on us.

After our exam, we had the last of the series of talks by our professors describing their research, and it was by far the most interesting of the talks. Apparently differential equations are actually useful in real life, and so we saw how they are applicable in cell biology, viscoelasticity, and other things as well. It was also the first time that I had heard anyone use a passage from the Bible to explain viscoelasticity.

On Thursday we went to Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. A group of seven or so of us left campus at 4:00 am to get there in time for the flag raising at 5:00. That was cool to see, despite not having a very good view (one of the few times on this trip where being short was not a good thing). One of the local students said that for Chinese National day people camp out the night before to get good spots for the ceremony (sort of like Chinese Paternoville.....Maoville?)

We spent the rest of the morning in the Forbidden City. I won't say too much about it, but it was definitely worth the visit. We had a tour guide, so, while I did appreciate getting to learn a bit more about the place than the average tourist, I would have enjoyed having time to wander around and absorb things at a more leisurely rate. I think that if I could pick any place and time in history to be a fly on the wall, it would be the Forbidden City during its prime. I don't think I would enjoy living in that time period, but I think it would be really interesting to observe.

After a hotpot lunch, we spent the rest of the day shopping before finally returning to campus and crashing.

Our flight left at 4:00 on Friday, so after a suprisingly short morning of packing and a final lunch with all of the PSU folks, the four of us who were returning on the 18th left for the airport. We were originally all coming back together, but most of the others decided to stay longer to go to various places such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I wish I had been able to stay longer, but one month was long enough to take off from my summer internship. As it is I will be two weeks short of the 12 weeks I am supposed to work for.

Our flight back to the US was not very bad (although it confirmed my belief that the meals that United serves are terrible). Yet again, however, our flight out of Chicago was cancelled (I think our airplane never showed up or something), so we got put up in a hotel for the night. I still got home by midafternoon Saturday, so I had some time to adjust before returning to work on Monday.

So for now, it's back to work for another month or so, and then school. There are a lot of things that I will miss about China (language, food, exchange rate, etc.), but definitely things that I will not miss (crazy traffic, pollution, the weather). I do know that I definitely want to go back someday, although not to Beijing. One downside of the trip was that I only got to see a very small subset of life in China (life on a college campus within a city). I am still very curious to see what the people and places are like in a more rural area. Maybe next time!