After being on a plane: First day!

07/31/2010

在飞机上之后：第一号在北京。So, first full day in Beijing. Apparently it was 28 degrees and cloudy today, not that anyone can tell, the smog is so thick I doubt anyone'll notice if the forecast "bright sunshine" for tomorrow comes true. That was basically the first thing I noticed on landing. After the relatively clear sky around Dubai (The streetlamps were visible from a few thousand feet up), descending through 2 seperated layers of smog was disappointing, purely because it obscured all view of Beijing further than the airport. A businessman (I had to jump over him several times to reach the bathroom because he wouldn't wake up -_-) spent quite a while telling me that it's only really Beijing that gets this bad, the further south you go the clearer the skies get. So I picked completely the wrong part of the country to study in. At least Qingdao's near the sea, breezes in theory? Yes? Good. Oh. And if I see Kristen Stewart's face one more time I might break it. 7 hours of the woman in front of me replaying the same section of New Moon is tooo much, did Pattinson base Edward Cullen on Old Greg? Alot of his lines seemed a bit Old Greg-ish... that's all.

It took nearly an hour to get through security check. The place was stuffed with foreigners all getting antsy - Chinese nationals breezed through (mmm, breeze) but everyone else was stuck standing still and politely shuffling forward for a while. This took so long that the driver collecting me figured I wasn't coming and attempted to go home, thankfully the office persaded him to stay *luck* Attempt at Chinese-speak on driver: relative success ^^ Although I forgot the word for "trees" so my polite conversation failed because the entire highway is surrounded by trees. Left me a little dry for comments~

The Hotel is... interesting... the website calls it 60s chic, i call it steam-punk/70s/rabbit hole. Seriously, very dark, there's an annoying little nightlight next to my bed, only figured out how to turn it off this morning *fist shake* The windows of the hotel have LEDs shining through so the front looks like a collection of lego blocks It's in a fun area as well. I was here 1 hour before Peter filled me in on the gay bar across the road and the "not nice" bars around the corner (I assume strip clubs but they could just be really boring bars...). It's the Sanlitun 三里屯 district so mucho shopping, eating and underage kids wandering around in heels and hotpants (I say underage but I'm western so I probably look about 30 here D. Apparently it's quite an affluent area, which explains why the the car park at the hip-hop club (full of teenagers/students) was full of BMWs and Auldi cars. This is good because the Liverpudlian in me was thinking: Posh cars? Gangsta music? Shit! *flee* The streets definitely come alive at night - Those dodgy snack barrows Wang Laoshi told us never to eat from line the longest street in the area, and look pretty popular too.

Jet lag caused problems. It allowed me to sleep at 6am, then woke me for 10:30 just in time to miss breakfast -__- Very tired right now~ On the bright side it meant i was forced to exit to forage for food. Found a noodle take-a-way round the corner. Nobody spoke english and I couldn't say what I wanted in Chinese so i was going to give up and exeunt, then the girl behind me translated, I got my food, all were happy ^^ I forgot how Chinese food smelt, I can't describe it, there's just a smell that tells you "Yep. That's reall Chinese food".

ZOMG! A lady just rang the doorbell on my room (Yes. A doorbell. It's quite musical as well.) and gave me mochi! Why? I know not! *nom*

I have many plans for tomorrow. Firstly to seek out the Wudaokou 五道口 student shopping area and practice the bartering Then I'm going to test the metro and try to reach Tian'an men 天安门and Gu Gong 故宫 - Plaaaaaan!

But first some more mochi. *^^*



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