HBA Week1 Living Situation

I'm Yuki, a rising sophomore at Yale, and am in Beijing right now participating in Harvard Beijing Academy 2017 (HBA). Every week until week9, I will post an article about what I am experiencing and what I am learning here.

A little bit of my Chinese ability and the level of classes at HBA: Having taken Chinese120 and 130 at Yale, I am in Chinese130, a class for non-heritage third-year students here. If you haven't taken Chinese130 at Yale, you will definitely be in 120 here and if you have taken 140 at Yale, you'll be in 130 here. However, for those who took up to 130 at Yale, which class you will be in is uncertain. In my case, I think my knowledge of Japanese (including Japanese way of understanding classical Chinese) helped me a lot when taking the placement test and was decided to be in 130.

Hotel: Students stay at Xijiao Hotel, located next to Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU). Alike to normal hotels, staff makes bed and changes amenity (towels, shampoo, a bottle of water, toothbrushes) everyday. Breakfast is included and is provided at a hotel restaurant, which is much better than breakfast at Yale dining. Wifi is also available and though not strong enough for watching videos and doing video calls, convenient for sending emails and searching things. The hotel also has a recreation center, where visitors can play bowling, tennis, table tennis, archery, and swim. Office hours are held in this building as well.
↓Breakfast at the hotel

Around the hotel: A subway station is located about 500m from the hotel. Most of the restaurants and shops are around the station and you can eat and buy almost anything in that area. Subways in Beijing is very developed and you can go to anywhere within an hour with less than a few dollars.
↓A large shopping mall in front of the subway station

Laundry: Chinese classes, which start at 8am every weekdays, are held in a building in BLCU about 20 minutes walking from the hotel. Laundry service is located on the way to the classrooms and costs about 3 US dollars each time.

Next week, I will post about the Chinese class. Stay tuned!