Ni hao！Finally I manage to get a post for this written; been having laptop problems, which I’ll go over in a second. However, aside from that and losing my debit card, everything has actually gone excellent!
The flight to Beijing was uneventful; I had forgotten that the entire trip over the North Pole would be during “the day”, since it’s summer there (and summer at each pole is pretty much constant sunlight；gogo tilted axis), so it was somewhat hard to sleep on the plane, despite my desire to.
The airport was quite painless to get through; two forms to give to two people, and then walking past the people offering taxi service for about 350 RMB to get one who ended up costing me 72 RMB (I think I overpaid just a bit, but that would primarily be because I failed to note how much the toll was on the way).
Of course, my pronunciation isn’t that great, Chinese or otherwise.
So it’s no real surprise that I managed to get myself delivered to Beijing Youdian Daxue instead of Beijing Yuyan Daxue (Beijing Postal Service University instead of
After getting that problem sorted out and getting a second taxi ride for 12 RMB across downtown to BLCU, I then managed to find my room and crash for the night.
Notable things that have happened since then:
1) Went to Tianyi Market. This is… probably best described as a huge indoor bazaar. Each of the two buildings has seven floors; each floor is dedicated to selling one or two types of things, and you can barter for anything there; no fixed prices. It’s awesome. Sadly, a bit too far away to walk to right now; tried to at one point, got lost.
2) Laptop stopped working. Fan shut down, RAM started making my computer freeze, all that. Fortunately there’s tons of internet cafes (wang ba), so it’s not too hard to get stuff done, but still…
3) Started classes. Today, in fact! They’re… boring. Then again, I asked to be placed a level below what the test recommended for me, so that I could have a listening class (as only the beginner level has one). However, if the listening class doesn’t help, I’m going to get moved up a level and get going there.
4) Visited three (4) Chinese restaurants, one (1) Japanese restaurant, one (1) French/European restaurant, and one (1) combo Korean/Japanese restaurant. Of these, my favorite was easily the French one, Tous Le Jours (…what? Cheap, excellent food). The Japanese restaurant, Isshin, and one of the Chinese restaurants, Langer Restaurant, are tied for second (both have excellent food, but they’re more expensive then Tous Le Jours).
5) Had a physical at a Chinese clinic. I can safely say that the conditions in such places are practically American (assuming you go to the right one; I’d imagine others are worse, as well). It was a perfectly fine experience, all in all. Nothing of note occurred to make it exceptionally irritating, the bus ride there aside (it takes one hour to get there by bus if you leave during a busy time on the road. Quite irritating).
There’s not much else to tell! I’ll try and keep you guys updated; stay well!
-Tom
