First few days in Beijing

I'm in Beijing now.. can you believe it? My travel was okay (very long). I flew from Atlanta to Toronto. Then, Toronto to Beijing, which was 13 hours but turned out to be more because our flight was delayed due to the weather in Canada so we had to stay in the plane for another two hours. joy!
Finally when I arrived in Beijing the first thing that hit me was the pollution. I could barely see anything in the distance. I finally arrived at the Capital University of Economics and Business or CUEBin the Chaoyang District (located in the CBD of Beijing) at around 5pm on Wednesday (I left Tuesday at 10am).Wednesday night I unpacked and bought some food. Jet lag hit me pretty hard so I woke up at 3 and 5am. Hopefully it will get better. Thursday was interesting! I had to go to the other side of town to pick up my cell phone at Beijing University where I'll be in the Fall. It's such a gorgeous campus - there is a lake, a water tower (looks like a pagoda), the buildings look like temples, and you can actually see the blue sky and the sun. (Trust me that's huge). It looks foggy all the time at the university I'm studying now. In order to get to the other side of town, I decided to be adventurous and not take a taxi - I took the public bus. It took an hour and a half. I saw a lot of Beijing in an air-conditioned bus (such luxury). Once I got to what I thought was my bus stop, the police man told me I had to go to another place. Another bus - except that this one took me to the Summer Palace. Definitely not the office I was looking for my phone. At the Summer Palace (after taking two buses for the grand total of 4 kuai = over 50 cents) I decided that I had explored enough and would take a taxi to the office. That was a good decision because the office was far away. Finally after about 2 hours of traveling I arrived at the Yale-PKU Joint Undergraduate Degree Office where I picked up my cell phone from Professor Laughlin. Professor Laughlin then showed me the campus (which I love) and we had lunch at a local noodle place that was tasty. After that Cecelia, who is also doing the fall program, also came to pick up her cell so we talked a little while and then I headed back to CUEB - another hour and a half bus ride except that this time I had to stand because all the seats were taken. It was nice and sweaty! Yummy. Finally I came back and we had an orientation session. Some teachers showed us the university facilities and surroundings and then we all went to dinner at a restaurant near by. After that it was definitely early to bed.

A few days before I leave

Hi Everybody. I'm getting ready to leave for China in a few days so I thought I would start a blog. The cool thing to do, right? Being technologically challenged as I am, I thought it would be tricky but it's been pretty easy. Let's keep it that way.