I scored an aisle seat on the flight over (easy bathroom access), right next to this nice Chinese man who was traveling with his mother and baby daughter who happened to have a lop-sided bowl cut and hair that stuck straight up like my brother's did when he was a little guy. There was another baby in the aisle in front of me, along with a toddler, so naturally upon seeing all this I thought "LUCKY ME!!!". But actually, they were silent babies. For like 14 hours. Silent. Babies. On a plane. Someone should make a movie out of this.
Babies aside, getting through the whole flight was actually a lot easier than I thought, mainly because the back of each head rest had a nice little TV in it with tons of (300+) free movies and TV shows. So basically, after reading about 20 pages on the history of the CIA and halfway finishing the crossword puzzle, I watched some Flight of the Concords, some Will & Grace, some other random things about chimps and who knows what else, and then found out how awkward it is to watch Y tu mamá también in public where people can see over your shoulders. Don't do it. Srsly. So then I watched Ray to try and redeem myself, and not long after, we were on the ground.
We got through customs easily enough, I exchanged some America monies for some yuans, and I bought a SIM card near the baggage claim, though I'm not really sure how many minutes I ended up with and whether or not I can make calls to the States. I did make one successful call to a Chinese cell phone though, so it looks promising. Eventually six of us piled into this shady little van/taxi thing and headed for our hotel. I meant to take a picture of it when we got out to capture the shadiness, but I guess I was distracted by trying to figure out how much to pay the driver, getting my luggage, etc. On the drive over, I quickly realized that people here obey traffic laws even less than they do in New York. Also, even as far out as the airport you can see this sort of pollution smog hovering over the horizon, and it only gets denser the closer you get to the heart of Beijing. During the day, the haze is noticeable even at only a few yards' distance.
Our hotel is really nice...my only complaints would be that the rooms don't have any drawers to put clothes in, and internet isn't wireless or free (though it's only about $3 a day). OH, AND THAT THE SPECIAL MEN'S SPA ROOM IN THE BASEMENT HAS 3 HOT TUBS AND THE WOMEN'S HAS NONE. Haha, but otherwise, it's great. We get breakfast every morning, which is a mix of Chinese dishes and typical American breakfast food. I couldn't tell if the coffee this morning was burnt or just really strong, but either way, it was a little off.
The view out of my window. Look closely, and you can see Google.
A few of us ate dinner last night at a little place inside this huge shopping center called Lotus, which contains everything that you could ever need to buy. The restaurant we ate at had no English on any of the menus, which was actually a little surprising because a good portion of signs in the city are written in Chinese and at least some English. So our ordering consisted of pointing at pictures and guessing how much money we owed. It worked out alright in the end, but 4 of us descended on one poor cashier, so she was a little flustered once we were done.
I crashed pretty shortly after dinner and slept for a good 11 hours. We had class this morning at 9:30 and then again at 1:30, with a big lunch in the middle. Some Tsinghua grad students ordered all our food in the university's huge three-story dining hall. We ended up with way too much food, and with some interesting dishes that no one would touch. There was a weird, vinegary soup with whole fish chunks in it (scales, tail, and all), and then fried shrimp in their shells that we were supposed to eat whole. I figured it wasn't any stranger than sucking crawfish brains, so I went for it. Not too bad. After our second class, we were shown the campus printing facilities, which happen to be little run down shacks, tiny printing huts, all lining a campus side street where you pop in with a USB and do your thing.
Some general things:
There are TONS of bikes here, and people don't really lock them to anything or park them at bike racks. I've seen some people lock one wheel to the frame, but nothing beyond that. Though it's not very sunny because of the smog, a surprising number people carry umbrellas during the day to escape the heat. I'd say most women walk around in heels or flats, and apparently it's not a fashion faux pas to wear those little stocking footies, even ones that go a few inches above the ankle, without long pants to cover them up. There's very little trash along the streets and sidewalks. It often smells like incense outside. Cokes come in tall, skinny three-liter bottles instead of two-liters. I know there are a bunch of other things I'm forgetting, but I'll wrap this up.
And lastly, it just so happens that for one of my classes we're required to blog a few times a week through Blackboard, and we'll be given a username and password that family and friends can use to access all the blogs (I'll post once I receive), so that might end up being my main blogging focus for the trip. Also, I can't actually view my own blog here (I can only edit it) because it seems that all blogspot addresses have been blocked by the government. So!...I'll be posting stuff, but I won't really know what it looks like once it's up.
Now I have to do homework. The End.
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