First Impressions! More accurately, first post

1/13

So! Here begins the long series of “blog” entries from the great city of Beijing. I’m starting a few days late, so hopefully in my jetlag-induced state of delirium I can remember all the fun and wacky things I have gotten myself into so far.

So yea, jetlag. Somehow I managed to sleep from only 2am to 4am last night. I foolishly thought that my sleep problems were cured after snoozing until almost noon yesterday (I would have gone longer if hadn’t been quickly awakened by my roommates). But no! Somehow the jetlag just crept back into my brain. So I took my laptop down the hall to steal internet from outside someone else’s door and read about UNC’s demolition of UNC-Raleigh. Mwahahaha! The only problem is now it is approaching sleeping time back home so I want to go to bed before lunch has even started. No good.

Anyways, I suppose I should start from the beginning. Waking up at the crack of dawn to fly into hell…sorry I mean New Jersey. It probably wasn’t the best idea to get about 2 hours of sleep the night before my flight but that’s usually my style it seems. I didn’t start packing until that night so I should have figured it was inevitable. The flight itself wasn’t so bad. I actually managed to sleep for about 4 hours at the beginning from NJ to Beijing! The plane was surprisingly empty; I was in a middle row of seats and got all three to myself! I can’t tell you how nice it was to be able to lie down when I needed to. I did, however, apparently miss the most amazing view from the plane without a window seat. I was told there was a constant sunset/sunrise over the arctic circle for a couple hours. Dag. Maybe I’ll catch it on the way back.

So I was expecting a whole slew of people from my program on this flight. They turned out to all be there, but they were all hiding from me or something because I only met a few of them. The first was Mike Johnson, one of the guys from WM who turned out to also be my roommate. I also met a girl who is taking the same classes we are, doing an internship, and going on the same trips as us, but is NOT in our same program. She did it through some private company that I’m pretty sure just took extra money off the top to put her through the same stuff we’re doing. Except she gets stuck with her one roommate (the only other person in her “program”) in an off-campus apartment full of Chinese locals that’s a 15-minute walk from campus. I’m not sure I could handle that myself.

The flight itself was rather uneventful. I slept. I woke. I watched UNC-Dook games on my ipod and listened to music. I actually read through my Chinese textbook a good bit which turned out to be very smart, considering we had a language placement test the next day. My flight also was only 13 hours. I’m not sure where I got the idea it would be 18 hours long.

Then! After an unbearably long amount of time, we touched down in Beijing. I had heard stories of the horrible pollution, but I wasn’t really prepared for what I saw. It looked like there was a dense fog everywhere, but no. It was pollution. Yum. Other than that, though, I didn’t notice the pollution. There were smokestacks everywhere, but I didn’t feel like I was breathing in toxic air or anything. Other students complained about it a good bit so maybe I’m just not good at noticing such things.

Also, Beijing is cold. Did I say cold? I mean freezing. The local weather was around 25 degrees Fahrenheit when we touched down in the middle of the day. I really don’t mind it too much though, as my fancy new coat seems to do its job well. Thanks Dad!

Once we arrived we were taken to our dorms. I learned that living on the 5^th floor is not fun when you have a duffel bag with about your weight and size to carry. I survived, though and was pleasantly surprised at my living arrangements. Our rooms are really like hotels. We have two bedrooms, one a single and one a double, plus our own bathroom. Our linens are changed and bathroom cleaned every day, and we are brought hot water with teabags every morning. Tai haole! I met my other roommate, Junta Koshimizu, a student at Linfield College in Oregon.