With love from China

I have arrived in China! I have actually been here a couple of days now. I just received my school computer Friday, and was disheartened to discover that blogger is, in fact, blocked in China. To overcome this, I will simply type up my blog posts on office, and ask my sister to post them for me from time to time. This post will be a bit delayed because my sister is gone to a camp up river (in the woods) for Thanksgiving. Another traumatic discovery I made while trying to access the Internet in China is the ugly fact that Facebook is also blocked. It certainly makes connecting to home much more limited.

On another note, the teaching staff here is amazing. They are without question the most helpful and generous group of people that I have ever encountered. They also love to party, which has helped me to feel right at home! I have been taken out to supper, brought to grocery markets and taught how to cross the street. Crossing the street here, I should note, is the scariest thing I have ever, ever had to do. The cars do not stop for pedestrians here. Pedestrians are on the bottom of the traffic food chain. We have to stop, often midway across the street to let the cars turning left pass. Then, we have to scuttle the rest of the way across before the light changes and the oncoming traffic begins. It’s a seriously terrifying experience that I once heard compared to playing Frogger. It was no exaggeration.

In case anyone is wondering- I did not end up going to the Great Wall on Thursday, on account of the all you can eat appetizers and drinks the night before. I will make it there sometime, as people are always planning trips to go there. I was suppose to go visit some caves outside of Beijing today, but the school has my passport in order to finish my Visa process and I guess I need to have my passport with me if I want to leave Beijing (just in case they ask for it). This sucks because I was really looking forward to this day trip. Hopefully I will be able to convince someone to go to Ikea and grocery shopping with me today to pick up some desperately needed items instead.

I’ll write again soon! I will receive comments through my inbox, but will not be able to reply because of the Internet block. So please send comments!