First Blog Entry

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I had my first Chinese meal on the plane, fish and rice. It was great. To my dismay, the person next to me had hers replaced. I suspect because it may not have been cooked correctly, but at that point I finished mine and it was too late to check. First lesson of the day - check food. I had tea with the meal because it is smart to boil the water; I feel like I will be having a lot of tea. After sleeping about 8 out of the 12 hours in the plane, I was picked up at 5:45 AM my time by my RA and his friend, who live in the dorm I'm in for the next week. It was great to ask questions, and immediately have new friends. As we got into the bus, I immediately had a scratchy throat. I am hoping my allergies don't get the best of me. And just FYI, 14 degrees is cold! On the bus ride, the buildings were very monotonous. One after the next looked the same, and it was very old looking, even though you can tell they were put up to house the people pushed out from the construction of the olympics. I immediately took a nap when we got back. We are leaving in the next hour (1:30 PM) to grab lunch with a bunch of people in the program and walk around. My dorm is very archaic looking, and the showers are worst than the freshman dorms at
Redlands. But I am definitely up for the less-than glamorous trip that this entails. I am excited to see all the sites in Beijing, and am hoping to in the next week. I move out of the dorm and into my host families home next week. I hear many families do not speak english. Thats okay, because I can already feel my Chinese coming along...the desire to learn chinese is amplified as a need, and it is working for me. I have picked up new words, and am listening very closely to conversations taking place around me.


Josh

PS just add 4 hours to California time, switch the AM to PM or PM to
AM, and you get my time. It is 16 hours ahead in all.

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