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Arts and Crafts at the Seoul airport
This was so awesome!! We got to paint and decorate these little pieces of furniture. It was for foreigners only and they didn't even check our passports to verify hahaA little after noon on Monday, May 14, we landed in Beijing! We were greeted by Jay, a co-worker at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (CAUPD) where we will be working. He took us to our hotel and then took us to a shopping centre so we could get some essentials.
Our hotel is very basic but it's comfortable. At least we have internet and air conditioning (though the remote for mine seems to be broken because I can't adjust the temperature). The shower doesn't have walls or a curtain, it just drains into the bathroom floor. I don't really care because I have my own room so it's not like someone will walk in on me. But it does make the whole bathroom wet when you shower. Apparently there's one English channel on my TV but I haven't found it yet.
My first impressions of Beijing have been positive. Driving into the city, there were lots of trees along the highway. Jay told us that the city has put in efforts to put up trees around highways in order to create a noise and pollution barrier which is really great. We are in a very
not-touristy part of town where no one seems to speak English which makes our experience that much more of an adventure! All the buildings around us look the same and Jay explained that they were all built during the Communist times. There are some newer buildings close by as well and it looks like some of the old buildings are going to be torn down soon.
On Monday evening we went for dinner to a traditional noodle house just a block from our hotel. There was a line of boys at the front door who sing something when you walk in the door. Of course, no one spoke English, but they did have an English menu! The portions were MASSIVE and neither Fernanda nor I could finish. But it was soo delicious! We then both went to bed around 7pm and slept for about 10 hours.
Tuesday morning we went for our first Chinese breakfast which is included in our hotel. It was a buffet of things we didn't recognize but I personally found most of them to be delicious! Fernanda is a very picky eater but she found a few things she liked. We're curious to see
whether there will be new things every day.
We spent Tuesday wandering around our area to get our bearings. We found a park but we weren't allowed in. I think we were at the wrong gate. We then went to the Beijing zoo which was really fun! But it was also an interesting cultural experience. It seems the people of China have not yet been taught basic things like don't tap on the glass, don't feed the animals, don't give bears Coca-Cola (I'm dead serious this stupid girl was pouring coke into a bear's mouth I wanted to punch her) and of course take your children to the bathrooms which are free and abundant - don't just lay down a tissue and have them poo in the middle of the zoo. You know, the basic things. Many of the children have big wholes in their pants so they can easily go pee and poo. And I'm talking very young children here who should probably be wearing a diaper. And everything was just exposed. It seemed very unhygenic.
Chinese people also like to spit on the ground, and they like to cut in line. I've decided my polite days
are numbered and I'm going to start throwing elbows soon.
Lunch on Tuesday was a fun experience. We went to a restaurant with no English or even pinying (the spelling of Chinese words in Western characters) on the menu. It did have big pictures though so we found things that looked good. We also used the dictionary to identify the characters for different types of meat just to be sure we were getting the animal we wanted. It all worked out - we both got what we expected, though my bowl of noodles was 90% noodles and very slim on the beef and bok choy.
After lunch we both had a siesta in the hotel because we'd walked for 5 hours and we were still jet-lagged.
One thing I've learned in recent weeks - there are a lot of Chinese students at USC (already aware of that) but there are also a lot of USC students in China. It's actually absurd. So Tuesday evening we met up with two Master's of Public Policy (MPP) students from USC and went to a fancy mall for some deserts. One of them, Matt, is about to leave Beijing to continue
traveling and he's participating in a USC class near Shanghai next week. The other, Yolanda, is a Chinese girl who will be in Beijing for the whole summer. So we now have a local to help us out!
It's now Wednesday morning and jet lag/the bright sun woke me up at 5:30AM. I have about 2 hours until my first day of work! So I will have more stories soon!
-Dafne
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Tiffany
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=)
Awesomee! I want to make one too! I wonder if they'd check my passport.. hahaa