While I've been in Beijing for about two full days, we only just got internet access last night, so I'll start from the beginning...
The flight over to China went fairly smoothly, 13 hours go by pretty quickly when you sleep for nine or ten of them. The airplane was a double decker and we flew in the economy plus class, giving me plenty of legroom to get comfortable in. We flew over the North Pole and the Verkhoyanskiy Mountains in Siberia en route to our final destination of Beijing.
At the luggage pickup, I helped a worker grab a plastic tray off the belt and exchanged nee-hous. While looking for my bag, I see him in my periphery sidestepping closer and closer to me. When he was right next to me I turned to him and he put his hand on his head comparing his height to mine (about a full foot shorter than me) we laughed and he charaded welcome to Beijing to us. Another airport observation: the drug sniffing dogs were beagles! The least intimidating police presence ever when the policemen took out the chew toy and played with it.
On the busride over, we saw a lot of the poor areas in Beijing as we approached the city limits. Beijing Sport University is at the outskirts of the city, not many large buildings in the immediate vicinity. When unpacked, settled in and went to a banquet on the top floor of our dining hall. Steve, a few other students, and I ate at a table with our trip adviser Dr. Guan and two high ranking university officials Chao and Yu. There were a solid nine or ten courses on a lazy Susan on our table staggered throughout the meal; the food had really crazy textures, but I made sure to try everything and it was all delicious.
Afterwards, we were restless and walked around the campus. I tried to walk into every building that had curtains and a light on, so we checked out some shops and I walked into the doorway for the women's dressing room for the pool (the people in the street behind us screamed "NOOO!!!" when I took a step in - oops). We got some tape and put up our Red Sox and Celtics posters around the room. Stayed up til midnightish watching Euro highlights with an enthusiastic Chinese announcer.
Big Props of the Day
to Melissa Horowitz and Ian Moskowitz for helping me stay up til 4AM to minimize jet lag. It was a good last night to go out on, full of Beerfest, Flight of the Conchords, Mallrats, Bacardi O, and Celtics Game 6 4th Quarter.
I'm a few days behind right now, there's so much to do and so little time to write, but I'll try and rip out a few more posts later on today.
The flight over to China went fairly smoothly, 13 hours go by pretty quickly when you sleep for nine or ten of them. The airplane was a double decker and we flew in the economy plus class, giving me plenty of legroom to get comfortable in. We flew over the North Pole and the Verkhoyanskiy Mountains in Siberia en route to our final destination of Beijing.
At the luggage pickup, I helped a worker grab a plastic tray off the belt and exchanged nee-hous. While looking for my bag, I see him in my periphery sidestepping closer and closer to me. When he was right next to me I turned to him and he put his hand on his head comparing his height to mine (about a full foot shorter than me) we laughed and he charaded welcome to Beijing to us. Another airport observation: the drug sniffing dogs were beagles! The least intimidating police presence ever when the policemen took out the chew toy and played with it.
On the busride over, we saw a lot of the poor areas in Beijing as we approached the city limits. Beijing Sport University is at the outskirts of the city, not many large buildings in the immediate vicinity. When unpacked, settled in and went to a banquet on the top floor of our dining hall. Steve, a few other students, and I ate at a table with our trip adviser Dr. Guan and two high ranking university officials Chao and Yu. There were a solid nine or ten courses on a lazy Susan on our table staggered throughout the meal; the food had really crazy textures, but I made sure to try everything and it was all delicious.
Afterwards, we were restless and walked around the campus. I tried to walk into every building that had curtains and a light on, so we checked out some shops and I walked into the doorway for the women's dressing room for the pool (the people in the street behind us screamed "NOOO!!!" when I took a step in - oops). We got some tape and put up our Red Sox and Celtics posters around the room. Stayed up til midnightish watching Euro highlights with an enthusiastic Chinese announcer.
Big Props of the Day
to Melissa Horowitz and Ian Moskowitz for helping me stay up til 4AM to minimize jet lag. It was a good last night to go out on, full of Beerfest, Flight of the Conchords, Mallrats, Bacardi O, and Celtics Game 6 4th Quarter.
I'm a few days behind right now, there's so much to do and so little time to write, but I'll try and rip out a few more posts later on today.
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