Look out, China, here comes the waiguoren

Well, as I'm sure you've guessed, I have indeed made it to China. I wish I could say the trip was easy, that I enjoyed a nice, peaceful flight from the Land of Mickey D's to the Middle Kingdom, but alas, I cannot. In order to become more in touch with Chinese culture, I decided to dive into the tradition of filial piety early and honored my family's timeless tradition of horrible airport luck. On further reflection, I should have realized what was coming. A window seat, a vacant middle seat for extra legroom, and no screaming children behind me? Far too good to be true. As the plane took off I gazed longingly out my window and mentally called out, "Good bye, my homeland! You have been good to me, but now I must leave you and explore the Orient. Take care! I shall miss you!" It all seemed very dramatic to me, and I sort of fantasized myself as being some sort of American Evita ("Don't cry for me, Argentina!") as I was brought my first bag of stale pretzels. Well, at least I did until my plane turned around somewhere over Wisconsin. Yes, that's right. Turned around. I'm still not entirely clear exactly what was wrong since I was listening to my iPod, but I gathered something about improper air circulation over engine parts, a fire alarm going off somewhere, and concern about the plane's safety. For some reason they also decided to leak fuel out of the plane on purpose via the wings, which to this day still doesn't make any sense to me. In any case, an hour and a half later I found myself sitting in the airport again, cast unwillingly back into the mother land. So much for my dramatic exit.

We were lucky that there was another 747 in Chicago that was free for us to use. We were unlucky, though, that it wouldn't be leaving for another five hours. What does that mean? It means that instead of landing in Beijing at 3:00 PM, I would instead arrive at 12:30 AM. Lovely. Now, I want to note right here that during this time I absolutely 100% did call IES, my study abroad program, and notified them concerning my change in flight information so that they could have someone waiting for me at the airport. Given my family history of gross airport disasters, though, do you think that information was successfully passed along? Of course not. So, there I was, luggage in hand, in the Beijing airport with no one, NO ONE waiting for me. Thankfully, I had an emergency contact number in hand and, after some more phone calls, learned what to do. I found out there were more students on my plane, so I found them and we all took cabs to Bei Wai (Beijing Foreign Studies University). By the time I finally stumbled into my room ready for bed, it was 3:00 AM.

Despite a shaky start, my first week here in China has been rather smooth. Right now I'm finishing up my orientation week, so there hasn't been much free time yet, which is probably a good thing since it doesn't allow me time to stop and have a famous Lyndsey freak out session. There have been a TON of meetings concerning every topic under the sun (traveling in China, safety, homestay guidelines, culture differences, history run-downs, etc.), but all have been very useful. I've also had some spare moments, which I've used to explore a bit of the surrounding areas around the university.

Bei Wai is a beautiful campus with lots of greenery, but it's split in half. I am currently staying in a dorm on the west side, but across a major street there's an east side with more academic buildings. To get from one side to the other, you walk through an underground passageway that goes under the road. Beyond the east side there are quite a few shops, a grocery store, and lots of small restaurants. Right now there aren't many food vendors or cars around to dodge thanks to the government's clean-up program in preparation for the Olympics, but they should all be back by mid October. I've done quite a bit of exploring in the small shopping area by Bei Wai, and while I'll spare you all of the details I'll tell you about the most interesting things I've seen and noticed:


When in the grocery store, I decided to check out the seafood section just to see if I'd see something strange but true. I did. Nestled right between the jellyfish and the squid was a medium-sized box of big, brown pupa. And they were still alive. Have you ever seen jumping beans? They reminded me of those. Every once in a while they'd jump and twitch. It was very, very strange. And why were they in the seafood section?

For a quick snack, I ate barbequed squid on a stick.

I am fully convinced 98% of all of the dogs in Beijing are some form of chihuahua. Not kidding. They're everywhere.

I once saw a man walking a magpie on a leash. When my friends and I stopped to ask him about his strange pet, he proudly held his bird up and told us all about him. He declared that he had rescued it from the wild, that he often took showers with it, and that the two were best friends. The bird's name was Huahua, and he let me hold him. Now it turns out Huahua was not just any bird. Huahua was a LUCKY bird, and since I was able to hold him, the man said I would have good luck the rest of the day.

I found a small upstairs cafe called "Stairway to Love Cafe," and my friends and I just had to visit it. I mean, come on. The name sounds like it came out of a Barry White disco ballad. How could you resist? The food was actually quite good when we visited for breakfast. I had chrysanthemum tea and congee, a traditional Chinese rice porridge. Since all of us attempted to speak Chinese to the waiters, we were all given GOLD MEMBERSHIP CARDS. That's right. I'm now VIP in the Stairway to Love Cafe and can get my 12% discount any time, anywhere. All of the other IES students are very jealous, since they visited too and were not offered a card. Clearly I am going places in life.

So far the weather in Beijing has been constantly overcast and the sky is sort of in a perpetual state of gray. There are no clouds, and today I finally saw a small, hazy orange blob, which I figured out was the sun. It's hot here, but not in the sense of temperature. There isn't a lot of heat, but the constant humidity makes you feel constantly sticky and warm.


Now, the best part of my week here has by far been an activity called Mystery Beijing. For Part One, a fellow Skidmore Program student, Kor, and I were given a piece of paper with the name of a famous Beijing site written in characters on it. We were told we had to get to the site, get some sort of proof that we had been there, and return to campus by 1:00. We were not allowed to use any cabs, and we couldn't use English to ask for directions. At first we tried to use the Internet to look for a map and a translation to our site's name, but that didn't work. Finally we translated our site to “jialufa,” which ended up being a very large French supermarket. Since the internet failed us, we decided to be brave and ask for directions. Now, in China there are guards of some form or another EVERYWHERE. So, Kor and I went to some posted in the tunnel between the two halves of the university and asked for help. We explained the nature of our mission, and once they got the general picture they started spitting out directions. However, it didn't take them too long to figure out that our Chinese wasn't good enough to understand them. Now, this is a great example as to how friendly and kind the Chinese are. A Chinese guard personally escorted us out of the tunnel and across the street to an Olympics volunteer station, which was full of college students waiting to help stranded waiguoren (foreigners). They whipped out maps, drew pictures and highlighted routes, and told us the numbers of the busses we'd have to take. During that process, the guards from the passage kept coming up and checking on us to make sure we were being helped and to add their two cents to the flurry of instructions. Once that was all over with, we hopped on our bus. Or rather, we thought we did. Shortly afterwards Kor received a call on his cell phone. It was the volunteers. They had noticed we had got on the wrong bus, grabbed Sammy, Kor's friend who was also completing Mystery Beijing and happened to have been standing nearby, and used his cell phone to call us. They then told us what stop to get off of and where to walk to still make it to our site. So nice! And this wasn't an isolated incident. When talking to other groups, they spoke of people giving them their cell phone numbers and business cards in case they got lost, stopping and calling up friends and family to ask for directions when they themselves didn’t know, escorting them to subways and busses, etc. It was just amazing. The Chinese are known for their friendliness; it’s not just a result of the seven-year Olympics campaign. Well, to make a long story short, Kor and I ended up taking the most indirect rout to getting to the supermarket since we still got lost, but we did take our picture at the enterance and made it back to campus on time.

Now, Mystery Beijing Part Two was far more interesting. It just happened today, and was sort of like IES's version of The Great Race. Everyone was split into teams and we were given a clue that pointed to a famous site in Beijing. There were no rules, so we could use any means and any form of transportation necessary to get there. Once we arrived at the site, we had to find an IES representative and get our next clue that led to a different site. There were seven sites in total, and you had to get to as many as possible before you had to return to campus at 7:30 for dinner.

All in all, we only made it to three sites and didn't end up winning, but the experience was still unforgettable. I had three other people in my group and together we saw Tianamen Square, Jingshan Park, and Beihai Park. Jingshan Park was part of the imperial gardens behind the Forbidden City. It was breathtaking. We had to climb to the highest temple in the whole park, which was quite a hike, but totally worth it. We were able to see the entire Forbidden City stretched out beneath us, which was a breathtaking view. Plus, the temple was very beautiful: traditional tall red pillars, detailed, blue curving triangle roofs with painted scenery, and an 11 foot high Buddha inside. Behai Park was even more beautiful. It was right on a small lake and was composed of several small islands and shores. We had to take a ferry to get to our site, which was wonderful. It was a traditional boat full of carvings and paintings. The park itself was absolutely astounding: canals filled with lotus lilies, bit, huge temples, people practicing calligraphy, kung fu, and tai chi on the sidewalks, big, old trees and flowers, stone bridges.... Our site was a big wall with nine dragons carved on the side. The whole thing was painted, which made it look spectacular. Now, given how beautiful everything was, we spent too much time gawking and not enough time hustling from one place to the next, which prevented us from completing all seven sites and winning. Honestly, I don't care. What I saw was amazing and I wouldn't have whizzed through it for all the tea in China.

Next week looks like both a very promising and very frightening week. I'll start my classes on Monday, and tomorrow I'll meet my host family. That's right! I officially have a host family. I don't know anything about them, but from what I've learned about the host families in general they should be fantastic. I’ve also learned that I’ve gotten a spot on the Silk Road trip for my fifteen-day excursion with IES. That means I’ll be traveling up the Silk Road with my fellow Chinese students, stay with a Tibetan family for three days, spend four days in a Kazak village, ride camels and horses, see the Flaming Mountains and the third largest Buddha in the world, journey through the desert, and make it almost all the way to the China-Russia border. Also, today I took my language pledge. From here on out, no English unless absolutely necessary. I've got to admit, I'm a little scared, but I'm confident I'll make it work somehow. Wish me luck!