Thursday, August 26, 2010

Beijing!!!


After a long flight I finally made it to Beijing yesterday. I flew on Continental and was pretty impressed with their service. I enjoyed the flight and the movies that I got to watch. It was nice not having to wait on the plane after arrival to get my temperature taken, like last year. I'm glad the whole swine flu thing has calmed down.
I forgot how much I like it over here, it seems like I really havent been gone that long. I am staying a ways out of town this time, because I have a friend who is going to the university. I decided that since she wanted to get together it would be easier to stay close to her. I'm only here for a few days anyhow. I was delighted to realize that my Chinese hasnt suffered as much as I thought it would since being here last summer. I was able to communicate pretty effectively with the cab driver on the way to my hotel. When I remarked about the weather, he replied with the typical, "yeah, well, us fat people dont like the heat, we like the cold" statement. I love that people are so blunt here. As tired as I was, I was still able to keep up a conversation with the cabbie where he discussed human rights, US politics, and Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt (his favorite US Presidents). After a while I told him I was too tired to talk, since it was about 3am West Coast time, and I hadnt slept much on the plane. I got checked in to my hotel at about 430pm and decided to take a little nap. I ended up waking up and about midnight and forcing myself to go back to sleep until morning. Hopefully that will fix my jet lag, but we'll see. I'm staying at a Holiday Inn Express here in Beijing, and I dont think that I will do this again. I've stayed at nicer places here in China and I think I'm mainly paying for the American name here. The beds are tiny, I cant even imagine someone bigger than me fitting in one!

Anyhow, I have 2 more nights here in Beijing for this trip, time to meet up with some friends who are out here and see the sights. I think tomorrow I'll go check out the stuff they built for the Olympics. I leave sunday morning for Guiyang.