Goodbye Chicago, Hello Beijing! - May 11-15

After finishing my finals on a Tuesday, finding a subletter on Thursday, and somehow managing to clean my apartment and pack everything for two months, I got my flight at 6am that Friday out of O'Hare.

Clearly, this meant I had to stay up all night to get to the airport, and my friends gave me a ride. I got to the airport somewhere around 2am, but the airport didn't open until 4am, so I hung out for a couple hours until I could check in.

I had to connect through San Francisco, and then was off on a 14-hour flight to Beijing. The kid sitting next to me told me that he was a student in Japan, but that was about all I got out of him, since he slept literally the entire flight and didn't eat, drink, or do anything other than sleep. I was pretty jealous.

The flight landed on time, at 3pm in Beijing. Customs took about an hour, and I had to go through a temperature sensing thing (which I'm not sure how it worked, since it was boiling in the airport). Customs was pretty easy, and the only long part there was waiting for my bag to arrive.

My first view of China, out the window of the plane

Our professor had some Chinese students meet us at the airport, and there were a couple other kids from my program who arrived at the same time, so we got a big van to the hotel where we were staying. The Chinese students helped us check in, and I hopped into the shower as soon as I got to my room.

Our hotel, BFSU

There were five or six guys from our program who had gotten there the day before, and I went with them to dinner around the corner from the hotel. Most meals in China are family-style and served on a lazy susan, so the boys just ordered a bunch of plates and some Chinese beer (which is awful, but so cheap that nobody cares). Dinner was delicious, and came out to 20 RMB each, or just under $3 - I love China!!

After dinner we tried to find a bar, but instead found lots of things that aren't bars, so we called it quits after a good walk.