Alumni | Advisors & Faculty | Contact

CET Academic Programs

Study abroad programs for college and gap students

Photo Essay: CET Beijing

Photos by Fiachra MacFadden, (Colorado College) Student Correspondent CET Beijing: Intensive Language, Summer 2018

 

After dinner one evening, I took this shot of a beautiful Beijing sky. On clear days here, the skies can be quite marvelous.

 
A group photo taken during our weekly lunch session with students and teachers

 
A couple days prior most of this tree had been struck down by lightning (the rain has been very heavy for the last week or so!). After workers cleaned up the area, all that was left was this stump. One of my classmates deemed it to be a good place to sit and relax. Certainly got some weird stares (and laughs) from locals (see the guy in the background in the blue shirt who stopped in his tracks).

 
During class one day, we were each asked a question in Chinese about how many months it was till our birthday and what we typically enjoyed doing on our birthday. This was simply an exercise for us to understand how to say this basic sentence in Chinese. When we got to one of my classmates, he said that today was in fact his birthday! A few hours later, our teachers had bought him a birthday cake (if it’s your birthday while you are on the program, CET will buy you a birthday cake).

 
On the second last week of classes, each class prepare a five minute skit for the annual CET language intensive performance. This is my class rehearsing our skit.

 
Every Friday we try to go to a different restaurant to eat lunch. This week we went to an incredible hot pot restaurant and ate an incredible amount! Towards the end of the meal, a guy comes by with noodles that he pulls and twists and flicks around his head and body, and sometimes flicks the noodles across the table and pulls them back just in time so that they don’t hit the targeted person in the face (but close enough to get the targeted person afraid that the noodles will indeed hit them!). Really a treat to watch.

 
This is a shot of the hosts of the annual CET intensive language performance. They did a wonderful job introducing each skit and putting together a unique CET song (for those who can read basic Mandarin, the lyrics are on the screen behind).

 
My roommate and I hard at work on our homework!

 
In addition to the public bikes in Beijing, the busses and trains are extremely convenient and cheap to use. This is a photo I took on a bus one morning.

Learn More about our Programs!