Thursday April 6th -
Hello from 10,000 meters in the air! I’m currently about an hour away from landing in Beijing, which means I’ve been on this flight now for 12 hours. Compared to my previous long flights, this one wasn’t bad at all. I watched Aquaman (yes Jason Momoa) and slept from (in New York time) around 5pm to 9pm. I’ve been up since then, but I’ve made good use of my time. I rewatched Crazy Rich Asians because how could I not? And I cried and felt all the feels again because would you even be human if you didn’t? But after that I decided to rest my eyes from the bright screen by reading. After my AP English teacher from junior. year. recommended this book, I’ve finally finished it. For anyone looking for a good, mysterious, heart-aching, life-reevaluating read, I highly recommend Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. I would say more, but it’s all in the book. She has a way with words.
Friday April 7th -
I checked in at around 2pm with an entire entourage of people (grandparents, grandparent’s cousins, grandparent’s cousin’s children, and grandparent’s cousin’s children’s child). At peak, there were eight people in my dorm room at once. It was overwhelming but also heartwarming. The rooms here are insane. I was randomly put into a dingle which means I have two beds, two desks, two wardrobes, a HUGE refrigerator (including freezer), and an enclosed balcony area. There’s also air conditioning and the sheets are changed weekly. Wild. At some point, a group of people formed in the hallway outside my door so we all decided to walk around campus and check things out. The first, and most important, thing we toured was the dining hall. It is five floors of straight love. We ended up having dinner on the 3rd floor, where all of us got a hefty plate of rice, two meat-sides, and one veggie-side for 18RMB. That’s $3USD! Wild.
At this point I’m pretty settled in, just not quite organized yet. But I have two months ahead of me. I’ll get there. After that, I'll post some pictures of my room!
Sunday April 9th -
This morning I woke up just a bit before 5AM which isn’t bad considering I didn’t take any sleeping pills last night. Yesterday was our second settling-in day and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I had to make a trip to the dentist because I got floss stuck in my teeth… but that’s another story (thank you Tae for the new floss). The rest of the day was really laid back, and a chunk of it was spent exploring food options around the area. We tried dinner on the 4th floor at a Korean restaurant and ordered five entrees to share. For the five of us, we ended up each paying around $4USD. My mother says to stop converting everything and focus on having a good time, but converting is part of the fun. Maybe that’s weird.
HBA organized a social event at 6:30pm for us as a last chance to get to know each other before the language pledge. We mingled a bit before walking to 五道口, a hub for all the college students in the area. At sunset, a group of us sat on the top floor of HuaLian where there was a roof-deck and talked for a good two hours. By then, the sun had gone down and the air came to a cool crisp. It was almost the perfect temperature.
I keep having these moments where I think to myself, wow I could live here for a while. It’s kind of weird. Most of my life revolved around being in America because it wasn’t China. Of course, there’s more to see than just shopping malls and night-life. But for now, I like the feeling of holding on to this ideal perspective. It motivates me.
In an hour, I'll meet the other students out front and we'll walk to the placement test together. After that, the language pledge begins. Oh boy.