28 Hours Without Sleep Later

Today's a double-issue since I didn't have internet access yesterday to post anything.

01-10-08

I don’t have internet right now to post this, but trust me that I’m writing this the evening that I arrived in China. I met a good number of my group at Newark, including Will, my roommate who’s also from William and Mary, and Chris, my new friend from American University with whom I had fun and exciting adventures.

• The North Pole is beautiful right as you cross the boundary where night stretches on for months at a time. It’s also a frighteningly vast amount of ice.
• Thirteen hours on a plane isn’t so bad when you have movies starring The Rock on constant replay.
• Arriving in Beijing was odd, in that it seemed exactly like the place we took off- New Jersey
• My bank refused to give me Chinese money through the ATM. This was a slight source of frustration.
• After being picked up by our group in the airport, we were told to go down the escalator. As Chris and I faithfully did just this, apparently our group leader said “oh wait, no, upstairs” and marched everyone off. Chris and I waited at the bottom of the escalator for a few minutes, wondering what was taking everyone so long, and finally we set out looking for them. As it turns out, they were looking for us too, but we never did manage to find each other. We just wandered around the airport for about half an hour. Luckily, Chris had some money and I had the address of Peking University written in Chinese characters. With this power between us, we hailed a black-market taxi and proceeded on the most terrifying cab ride ever. What was perhaps most terrifying was that the city never seemed to end, the sky never seemed to yield its smoggy grey coat, and Batman never materialized in this Gotham/Sin City cross-breed. In Beijing the traffic seems to have taken all the best from Italy, New York, and driving behind a tractor trailer. When the driver dropped us off, we weren’t REALLY sure that we were at the university. We were just happy to get out.
• We found a very nice student who spoke just enough English to understand that we wanted her to read the Chinese directions to the place for foreign students and tell us where that was. She didn’t know, but she entertained us by accosting every other person on the pathway and getting them to tell her where it was so that she could lead us there. I asked her if she was on her way to meet friends, because I didn’t want to inconvenience her. I think she misunderstood me, because her reply was “I have a boyfriend.”
• Dr. Sun enjoyed our tale of abandonment.
• After hauling our enormous suitcases up the five flights of stairs to our rooms, we realized that we were in a hotel. I’ll put up pictures, because I don’t think I can really explain it properly. We’ve dubbed our hall “Hotel California.”
• Two of the students who were here last semester, Matt and Jessie, took us out to a mini-market and then to dinner. I bought a bottle of water for the equivalent of 40 cents. Then we bought dinner for four for an equivalent of one dollar. Pork and vegetable dumplings. Yum.

01/11/08

It’s Five o Clock Somewhere

Woke up this morning at 6AM Beijing time, which is 5PM EST. The goal of the morning is to find a phone to call home and inform those at home to call the bank so that I can retrieve money. Right now I’m borrowing 250 Kuai from Chris, and I’m sure that his goodwill, though bountiful, will eventually run out.

Upon waking up I went to our roommate Junta’s room (he has a single, Will and I are sharing a double for now) and took a crash course in the various pronunciations of a few words in Chinese. I am now 100% confident that I will call someone’s mother a horse before I leave.

Today we take our language placement tests. I wonder if I should just hand them a blank sheet of paper or sit down, spend some time looking at it in a display of effort and concentration, and then hand in a blank sheet of paper.

(update) I insisted I knew no Chinese whatsoever, and they made me write my name down at the top. The guy then took it, looked at it, and wrote a big zero on it. Which made me feel good.

Tomorrow- look for the tale of the noodle house!

Phrases learned-
"Thank You"