Arrival--from Alyssa

Alyssa Parker

Blog Post 1

5/28/2011

SIS China Blog post #1…where to begin? I had a horrific plane ride yesterday from Toronto to Beijing in which a lady kicked my chair repeatedly for 14 hours. I asked her to stop three times, and on the third time she smiled at me wickedly and began shaking my chair back with her hands.  At least there was free alcohol. When I got in to Beijing I was delirious from being so tired and got to bed as soon as possible last night. I do remember the airport being extremely nice and new. So, in a nutshell, day 1 in China- nothing really happened for me (or I just can’t remember because I was so tired).

The air quality here is bad, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I went for a jog this morning and had no trouble breathing. The weather is hot, but not as ridiculous as I thought it would be so far. (But it’s only been 1 day, so we’ll see what happens.) One of the first things I noticed in Beijing is the need for constant vigilance. There are so many people always rushing to get where they need to go. If you don’t pay attention, you get pushed, screamed at, cut in front of in line, run over by a car, etc. Stay alert; stay alive! It’s the busiest city I have ever seen.

On to the discussion of our living situation: we are in a 3 room suite in the international student dorms at Peking University. They are very basic rooms- bed, desk, and closet. The common room has a table with 3 chairs. The bathroom has a western style toilet (yay!) and a semi-western style shower (double yay!). However, we decided we are going to need to decorate the walls with posters of Chinese pop stars or something, because right now the place is pretty depressing. Only one of the three internet cable jacks is functioning at the moment, therefore we have to share the internet. This is very inconvenient thus far. The outlets in the rooms are also very finicky- they sometimes work and sometimes do not work. The other inconvenient thing is that the University is sort of far away from nightlife, restaurants, and the city in general. It’s also very far away from where I will be doing my internship. Why are we staying here, you ask? Beats me.

The food so far is what I expected, but I haven’t really had a chance to explore very much. I am pretty excited to be here, and I’m looking forward to seeing everything over the coming 5 weeks!