Why?

The Light Fellowship wants a blog out of me. I say $7800 for a few blog posts is a pretty good deal, so here it is.

For those who've somehow come upon this site other than through the Light, I'm going to be in China this summer, doing intensive language study at the Beijing Language and Culture University with the Harvard Beijing Academy, fully funded by Yale's very generous Light Fellowship (thanks!). I leave for China on May 31st - my dad's decided to use this as an excuse to travel in China, and he'll need me to translate. I'll be doing tourist stuff with him for a couple weeks (in Beijing and surroundings, Xi'an and Luoyang, most likely) before the language program starts and I give up speaking English for 9 weeks (though I can actually still communicate with everyone back home, I just can't speak English face to face).

Mailing Address (for those who want to send me stuff, please do)

David Porter

Harvard Beijing Academy

Conference Center

Beijing Language and Culture University

15 Xueyuan Lu, Haidian Qu

Beijing, 100083, P. R. China

Or, if you're feeling more Chinese

蒲德文

北京市海淀区学院路15号，100083

北京语言大学会议中心, 哈佛北京书院

(and if you want the American post office to know what to do with it) Beijing, China

Anyway, wish me luck. This is the test of how much I actually like Chinese.