Advertisement
Published: June 22nd 2006
Dorm
This is where I am living for the next ten weeks. After 20 hours of travel, I was finally able to go to bed in my new room! The journey was actually quite pleasant, aside from having to sit in an airplane for hours😊 I started in Toledo Tuesday afternoon, took a quick flight to Detroit, and then on to Tokyo (that was a 13 hour flight). From Tokyo it was another four hours in the air to Beijing. Once in Beijing I met my roommate, who happened to be on the same flight, while in line for customs. By the time we got through customs, met up with Shirley, one of our guides, and got to the dorm, it was almost 12am Thursday!
The dorm here is really nice, it is ten times nicer than either of the dorms I stayed in at college. Apparently a hospitality company runs this dorm and a couple four star hotels, so the rooms and the service feel much more like a hotel. Rachel and I share a room and even have a computer, air conditioning, TV, and bathroom in our room! The dorm is strictly for international students, I've been told by Shirley (a student in Beijing) that her dorm has six
girls to a room, no air conditioning, and they have to use a public bathroom. So I am very thankful for our digs.
This morning we took a tour of the campus. It is good sized and very urban, it is surrounded by city. The Capitol Normal University is located in the third ring, which means it is not downtown, but about a mile from the downtown area. Then this afternoon we had an orientation, which told us how to get around and what to expect on our stay. Tonight we have a welcome banquet where we will meet some other students outside of our group. In our own group there are ten of us. All but one are from the states, one girl is from Colombia. So far everything is going well.
Interesting Cultural Fact: Apparently not only 13, but also 14 is a bad number in China. Our dorm's elevator goes from floor 12 to floor 15!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.193s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.1038s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lisa D
non-member comment
Congrulations
Hi Tekla. I'm Carla's penpal from Australia. She told me you were keeping a blog on your trip, so of course I had to have a look. Glad to see that you arrived safety. Is that you in the picture? Love reading what you wrote. I will be following your journey closely.