Getting to and around Beijing has been surprisingly easy. I'm here 3 days before my official trip starts, to hang out and explore with just one other friend (my travel buddy for the next 6 weeks). Friends at home dropped us off at the airport, then many hours later (after a mere 12-hr flight), someone picked us up on the Beijing end too, and brought us straight to our hostel. Although we've since experience the incredibly nice and user-friendly subway.

We're staying at a cool little youth hostel, right behind a bunch of fancy hotels, which are at least 15x the price. The Vegas-style strip (very classy, though, not at all sketchy) nearby is kind of weird in its excessive Westernness.

Friends from school took us out the first night to a very cool veggie restaurant. So nice to hang out with locals. We've managed to get by so far with extremely limited Mandarin and gestures, but there's nothing like a native speaker to help you out.

Yesterday we checked out the Olympic site, which is absolutely amazing in real life. I sort of got the willies about being on the field of the Bird's Nest, imagining all the excitement... Strangely we've been able to get the student rate about the half the time; I think you're really only supposed to get it with a Chinese student card.

The best part about the Olympics was perhaps our lunch. We've been having less than stellar results finding veggie food on the street (although we've sort of been able to communicate "wo chi su de," literally "I eat vegetables"), so lunch yesterday was Cheetos and popcorn, and today at the Summer Palace it was granola bars we bought and crackers.

Sadly last night I almost fell asleep at a cool underground place called Mao, with a band Buyi that looked really rock, but sounded much more mellow.

Highlights of today, apart from the Summer Palace itself, include seeing a curling match on a huge screen on the edge of the lake. Normally I'm highly opposed to such technological infiltration of an historic site, but I'll make an exception here.

Afterwards at the Temple of Heaven, a group playing a variation of hacky-sack with 4 feathers on the end of a set of tambourine bell-thingies, instead of the hacky-sack, roped us in to play. Super fun, and very cool that it was fun for all ages. The whole park was full of people gathering for these creative activities -- operas that everyone knew the words to; karaoke; and other musical things. And on the way out we passed by a playground, but more like an outdoor gym for grown-ups -- everyone was stretching and doing exercises on things that otherwise looked like they were for kids.

I'm still super tired, so I think I'll head to bed even though it's barely after 9. I'm sort of concerned about my energy level during the trip...


From afar,
Emma