Orientation Week
Trip Start
Aug 23, 2008
1
26
Trip End
Dec 12, 2008
Beijing,
China
Saturday, August 30, 2008
I had gotten no sleep the night before I left to arrive in China so I was able to sleep through most of the flight. Which was really nice.
Once I landed and went through immigration, it was time to find my hotel. This is a much larger task than most people would think. As you may or may not know most if not all taxi divers in China do not speak any English nor can they read it. Another major problem is the fact that the drivers know how to get around Beijing via the major bridges spanning the major streets. I was very happy when the cabby called the hotel and asked where it was and I was off to the hotel. We go there with no hitches.
That evening I decided to hop on the subway to go to an area that I knew in order to get some food. This plan backfired because little did I know that they were to close all the subway stops anywhere near Tiananmen Square which was where I had been planning on going. So instead I got a hour long subway ride back to my hotel and ate at McDonalds. After my wild and crazy adventure I decided to go to bed super early and crashed out 20 mins after the closing ceremonies for the Olympics started.
Monday:
In the morning I woke up early to try to get campus. But for some reason the phone at the IES center was not working. Eventually I gave up and called AiLaoshi (our emergency contact here.) He told me where I was going to be staying on campus and that he wanted me to help him with orientation.
So I made my way to campus, checked into my dorm room and began my work on the orientation team. That afternoon I went to the airport and picked people up and I helped one of them get checked into her room. That evening we had a mixer where I met a few of the other students.
Tuesday:
On Tuesday I woke up super early and was able to get super yummy food from one of the stands near campus. I just spent time guiding a group of students in the area around Beiwai.
Wednesday:
Wednesday was the day that I took oral placement exam and found out what my classes were. Fall term I will be taking Modern Chinese Lit and Chinese economics of some kind. After that I just sat and listened to lectures of what to expect from the language program. This was the evening where we found out where the possible long trips that we go on are going.
Thursday:
This was the first day of my language class. I was very happy to find out that I was not the worst student in my class. I was also happy to rediscover that I could still understand the grammar really fast. This means that I can spend most of the term working on my vocab which I really need to do without feeling that the grammar is slipping away.
Thursday afternoon was the first of 2 mystery Beijing's. I just followed a group around and made sure they didn't get lost. They we assigned to go to houhai which is where a lot of bars and stuff are. It's not an area I'm familiar with so it was fun to be able to wander around some.
Friday:
Now Friday was a strange morning. This is because of the assembly line physical exam that I had to go to in order to change my visa so that I can go home for the holidays and be able to tell. We got a form and went to 6 different stations. Each station checked something different.
1. Blood pressure
2. Height and weight
3. Vision
4. ECG (heart function)
5. chest x-ray
6. blood drawing
Once we were done with that the day ran like Thursday. Except, instead of running around with the groups I stayed back at school because of my foot and helped to count teams as they came to the end of the race.
Saturday:
Saturday morning the net at school died ; ; but on the plus side this was also when my computer died for the last time and would not start up. This meant that I got to spend the day looking for the apple store in Beijing. I was fun but tiring to get there because I had not explored the area I had to go around much at all.
Well I found the apple store and they were able to fix my computer while I was waiting in the store ^^ I was really happy. After that I went to Starbucks where I was sitting when I started this... but I moved because I was done eating so I finished this in my dorm room after I got home from my crazy adventure.
