The Arrival and Settling In

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Well friends...today I finally arrived in Beijing! The travel was pretty straightforward, which was a good thing. I landed in the massive Beijing Peking Airport around noon local time. To my luck, it was snowing. Great...just the perfect way to welcome me into a foreign new city. For those that know me, I don't deal well with the snow. I find it depressing and an outright buzz kill. Oh well, I will get over it.

I took the Airport Express Railway to the Beijing Metro. Then, I took the Beijing Metro to the Guomao station. Originally, I was planning to walk from the Guomao station to my apartment. However, as soon as I got out of the escalators onto the street level, I became pretty intimated by this massive urban jungle. There were tall buildings after buildings. The station was right next to a series of highway bypasses. So, I gave up my attempt to be spontaneous and flagged down a taxi. To show that I wasn't a complete tourist, I even small-talked with the taxi by asking whether it was snowing hard earlier today. He replied in some sort of heavy-accented Northern China Mandarin...which I didn't catch any word of. So, I just mumbled "oh ok...so it didn't snow too bad huh?"...just playing it off.

I finally arrived at my apartment. My roommate wasn't home. Luckily, my mom told me to take her spare China cell phone (thanks mom). After fumbling for 15 minutes to figure out how to dial a Beijing number with all the confusing country code, area code...etc...I finally reached him. My roommate turned out to be a pretty cool bro...he invited me out with his friends tonight...so we shall see how that goes. The apartment is spacious but a bit old. I will do my best to make this my home for the next 6 months.

...and that's how the cookie crumbles.

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Photos

Snowy Beijing
Snowy Beijing view from my apartment

Comments

[Johnny speaks]

looks like youre going to have an awesome adventure! keep us informed!