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.

Washington DC

So I have officially begun my Fulbright journey. As I type this I am flying at 33,000 feet to Washington DC for the predeparture orientation. I'll be there for five days, three of which will be spent listening in on what exactly it is that we are supposed to do. After that I will spend some time with a good friend and ring in the 4th in style in the capital city. The only thing I am not looking forward to is the heat and humidity, but I guess I should get used to the humidity at least. Today in Guiyang it is 71 degrees and there are some nice thunder and lightning storms on the horizon. On another note, I purchased my ticket to Beijing the other day. Got a smokin' deal on a Continental flight out of Newark; only $699 one way. Its lucky that I am a flight attendant or I would have had to fly out of Seattle where the ticket prices were much higher. I will post again after the orientation, we are on descent and the inflight wireless will shut down soon. Bye for now!

Welcome

Hello everyone, I just recently found out that I will be heading to China for the next school year and thought that I would keep a log of my adventures. Posts will be intermittant until I actually get started over there but once I am up and running I hope to put something up once a week or so. I will be living in the city of Guiyang which is located in Guizhou, north of Vietnam. The area is rich in culture and is home to a large amount of minorities (which is what I will be researching). I am also particularly excited about the fact that all the guidebooks say that Guizhou is not an area that is visited heavily by tourists.
I am very excited about this trip and hope to include others in my adventure through this blog.