I guess we will start Day 1 with the moment I got off the plane. Even though 3 hours of sleep does not seem like enough time to separate two different days. Leg three…complete…welcome to China. If you do not catch the reference in the title, it is referring to The Hangover 2…just think about it or Google it if you have not seen the movie. It literally feels like you are in another world as soon as you walk off the plane. There is this really crazy ceiling in the airport that I did not take a picture of on the way in (hopefully I remember on the way out). The number of Chinese people that I have seen in my life doubled or possibly tripled in a 20-minute period. I cleared customs and people who could not speak a word of English surrounded me. When I smiled at the lady who took my passport I was met with a straight face…I was clearly not at home anymore. After clearing customs it was on to the baggage claim. Bag one…check, the woman at RDU continues to be an angel in my eyes. Bag two, on the other hand, which Air Canada forced me to check at the gate did not arrive. In fact when I went to the office to ask of its where abouts, a young Chinese boy told me in broken English that is was sitting in Toronto and would not arrive until late the next day…awesome start. I then exchanged $100 USD for right around $650 RMB…booyah!!! We were met at the gate by who I would later find out are our student assistants from Peking University (Rui, Yuan, and Ying). They walked us to a bus and we started on the hour-long drive to PKU. The driver of the bus was a sweet looking Chinese woman who spoke no English, but if you had been blind folded you would have thought that she put the worst NYC taxi drivers to shame. She was fitting our bus into the tiniest openings, dodging around other cars, going out of the lanes onto the side of the road where no one drives in the US and simply driving recklessly…I would later find out that this is completely acceptable and necessary behavior for a driver in Beijing. When we arrived at campus our group discovered our home for the next two months, and it was really nice. The buildings were new with great architecture and they were clean. They surround this great courtyard that has a round about, flowers, trees, and stone benches everywhere. We checked into our rooms and had to give a 500 RMB cash deposit…that pretty much took care of the cash that I had withdrawn. Everyone took the time to unpack and after about an hour my roommate John (Nash) (there are three Johns on the trip) arrived as well. After we got settled in we met up with Yuan, Ying, and Professor Akin and they took us to a restaurant around the corner. The way that you eat food in China is very different than in America. To start, everyone has only a tiny plate, about the size of what we would rest our coffee cups on at a restaurant. You obviously do not have a fork…only chopsticks. Finally, the food is brought out and put at the center of the table and everyone shares everything. Our dinner was pretty good, but definitely different than sesame chicken or General Tso’s chicken. Some of the weird dishes included this strange white stick with a odd texture and taste, covered in a jam, random meats, veggies, and chicken were served in ways I had never seen and there was a fried dough covered in a good, yet unidentifiable orange sauce. Fortunately, Tsingtao, the Chinese beer, is pretty awesome. After dinner Yuan and Ying took us to the East Gate of PKU, which is right by our building. After 10 minutes of arguing with the guards we had to walk to another gate to get in because we did not have our ID cards yet. They took us to a little underground convenient store on campus where I was able to buy a few essentials such as a towel and a huge bottled water. After that we went back to our rooms and went to sleep after the long day. It was the first time that I had a chance to catch my breath since I left Gastonia.
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