We have now been in Beijing for three very busy days. After our 30ish traveling hours, we finally arrived in Beijing. It was a loooong day of traveling—arrive at the airport in Grand Rapids at 4:40 am, sit around the airport for 2 hours, half hour flight from Grand Rapids to Chicago, sit around Chicago for 4 hours, fly from Chicago to Tokyo which was a 12 hour flight (I’m not a big fan of being on a plane that long), sit in the airport in Tokyo for 4 hours, a 4 hour flight to Beijing, close to an hour to go through quarantine tests, customs, and baggage claim, and an hour taxi ride to our hotel. It was a long day and we were all excited to go to bed shortly after arriving at the hotel. It was close to midnight on June 10 before we got to go to bed. (we left June 9).
The next day, we had breakfast at our hotel which was quite an interesting experience—we had watermelon, bread, fried rice with egg, steamed buns with seaweed inside, hot orange-aid, and very weak coffee. It was nothing like we are used to. After breakfast we started our Chinese language training. We started class at 10, which lasted for 2 hours. Our teacher is really nice and does a good job to make sure that we are pronouncing words correctly and making sure that we use the correct intonation. After class we went out for lunch. We went to a street vendor where we ate noodles and dumplings. I would have to say this is probably my favorite place to eat so far. After lunch we went back to our hotel to rest and take a nap (naps are very popular here—and I like it). After our naps we went out for dinner and got a lot of dishes to eat—they eat family-style in restaurants. (aka order different dishes, which sit in the center of the table and everyone picks out what they want). After dinner we went to our hosts’ apartment and enjoyed some fruit and random conversation.
The next day (Friday) was much the same at Thursday. The only difference was instead of taking the typical rest in the afternoon, we went to the silk market. It was very overwhelming—every person yelling at you trying to get you to buy something. It became very hard trying to ignore everyone to just walk through and look around.
Today, Saturday, we went to a middle school gym to play sports (badminton, jump rope, and volleyball with a balloon and only hitting it with your head, shoulders and chest) with some friends of our hosts. It was a lot of fun, but it was really, really hot—over a hundred degrees without any air movement. After sports, we went out for lunch and caught up with Bettina’s sister who has been living here for the past two years. With her, we went to the Beijing Zoo, Starbucks, and Papa Johns for dinner. It was nice to have some food that we recognized and was familiar. And now I sit here writing to tell you about my first few days.
A highlight—we found an English television station. The only downside is that they like to play the same news stories over and over again—we get to see the same news stories at least twice a day (depending on how often we are in the hotel).
That’s all for now. I hope you are all doing well and I’d love to hear from me. Email me at erika.colyn@gmail.com.
