Day 1-Arriving in Beijing

Surprisingly the 16 hour flight was good, but unfortunately I couldn't sleep because of a cute but energetic little boy sitting behind me that liked to kick the seat. Between me, Jess, and Amy he rotated sitting behind each on of us so we all got to experience his hyper kicking activity, but all in all the flight was pretty good. I have to say i can't believe that i'm in china right now. The airport for one is absolutely huge and it has amazing architecture too. I've never seen an airport so big, I can't imagine what it must be like there during the holiday season or so. Anyways, we all took a bus back and then about 15 minutes later when we were doing a head count there were 19 students...out of 20. Huh, not even a half hour of being in China and we lose one already. Although if you look at it technically we still retained 95% of the group so that's still a pretty good success rate, but I doubt that the University would like that too much. We then planned a rescue mission and finally Nick was found! With an array of cheers and clapping we then proceeded on our way, with everyone. We passed by the olympic stadiums but it was hard to see them because of all the smog, the air quality here seems to be a bit thicker, the air is cloudy as if it was foggy but without the cooling mist part so it makes it a bit hard to see. It's pretty hot and muggy around here, I think it's about 75 degrees or so, but it's really not too bad. We then arrived at Minda University in Beijing and got our own floor of dorms and such. The rooms were nice, let's just say they had a few visitors here and now but it really was so bad. The lobby area for all of our rooms was our congregation spot for laptops and internet. Afterwards we finally got a chance to eat. We all went to this restaurant down the street and had a nice family styled meal. We met with a friend of Professor Dong who was one of the people who helped move one of the hutongs (an old Chinese neighborhood) and prevent it's destruction. So far the food is really good around here, I've already tried a bunch of things that I've never had before and I definitely prefer that to the bad airplane food. So our first night in Beijing we decided to go for a bit of exploring, little did we know that we would soon get into a lovely little conflict with some of the locals. So it was about 15 American students just walking down one of the streets of Beijing, Tom just happens to be sauntering along and then accidentally walks into a bicycle, which then sorta happened to crash into a car knocking off the license plate. Amy and Evan came to Tom's rescue with their Chinese skills. Apparently the valet of the cars didn't want to get in trouble and wanted Tom to speak with the owner, when the owner came out he wanted Tom to come with him to the car shop to help repair the damage because I mean a license plate is just so integral to the functionality of the car that of course Tom needed to accompany the owner. Luckily, long story short, Tom paid them 100 kuai( $15 bucks) and we were off our merry way.