Ahhh it feels great to wake up not feeling sick and instead feeling well rested and ready to go. After a quick shower I was on my way to my 9:00 AM Chinese class. I arrived right on time and even felt a sense of pride because our Chinese teacher had not arrived yet. Over the next fifteen minutes the rest of our group arrived in the classroom, but still, our teacher did not arrive. Our group was even joined by one of the Chinese women who is in charge of the international relation’s program and we all chatted with her while we waited for our teacher. But, after thirty minutes had passed and the teacher had not arrived we decided to pack it up and call it a morning. The woman from the international relation’s office politely asked us to wait fifteen more minutes while she made a few phone calls (she was clearly embarrassed). After a total of forty-five minutes of waiting and no less than fifty apologies from the woman from the international relation’s office, we headed back to the Global Village. Secretly, I was psyched that our teacher did not show up. 1. I felt that I had reached my limits on my Chinese language knowledge and 2. The Heat were playing in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Nash and I hurried back to our room where we were able to watch the (disappointing) second half of the game (the Heat lost). The announcers of course spoke in Chinese, but it is nice to be able to watch something that I would have been watching at home. The second half of our Friday off from work was devoted to taking a tour of a GE plant in China. Before we left Rui had ordered all of us lunch from Dominoes. Once again, American food in China managed to disappoint (maybe surprise is a better word) me. My thoughts were focused on pepperoni, meat lovers, and margherita pizzas, instead I was treated to corn, shrimp, crab, and weird sauces all over my pizzas. After eating the strange lunch and thanking Rui and telling her how great it was, we all loaded onto an undersized bus and embarked on the hour and a half drive to the GE plant. The tour of the plant was pretty cool but I am not sure they exactly understood who we were. One Chinese factory manager kept asking me where I got my MBA and another kept asking which business it was that I started in Beijing. They started by giving us a run down of business in China and where China fit into GE’s bigger business picture. After the discussion they led us around the actual plant where we were able to see hundreds of Chinese workers building MRI machines and other hospital machinery. Before we left we took a big group picture and the manager of the plant gave us all a nice USB flash drive that had the GE logo stamped on it. When we got back we convinced Yuan to take us to the store (man standing on the side of the street) that sold bicycles. Once we arrived I quickly picked out my winner. It was black and awesome. I bartered with the man to get the price down to 210 Yuan (a little more than $30) and I made my purchase. It was perfect. As I was biking back to the Global Village the perfection ended when my seat collapsed, transforming from a perfectly flat seat into a nearly vertical seat…awesome. Today was Ying’s birthday and we were all planning on meeting her at Lush to celebrate. But, before we went Yuan and Rui took us to a really nice Chinese restaurant, in a mall that was at least seven stories tall, to eat dinner. The restaurant was really delicious, but the highlight and funniest part of the evening was watching fifteen American students, led by two Chinese students, bike around the city. Purchasing a bike quickly turned Beijing into one of the most dangerous cities on the planet. Everyone had, at a minimum, one close encounter with a car and I considered it a miracle that we all arrived at Lush safely. Once we arrived we quickly found Ying and I convinced Rich to sing her happy birthday. We spent the rest of the night hanging out with her and making sure that she had a great time.
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