I’ve decided to keep track of my adventures for the summer, and I’d like to share my thoughts with anyone reading my blog. I’ll try to make it interesting!
Okay, so day 1 was a little hectic. After being on the plane for 15 hours, Beijing seemed like a slice of heaven. Freedom at last… despite the heavy pollution and black clouds shrouding the entire city. On the flight, I sat next to two people who claimed to just be friends from school. One time, I woke up from my sleep and saw the girl sleeping on the guy’s lap. My initial reaction was, aww, how cute. Then, I realized, she was sleeping face down right where his crotch area was, and I couldn’t help but lead my mind to the gutters. I suppose you could call it karma, because soon after, I bumped into my first obstacle of 10 week journey. I discovered that my Chinese VISA is only good for 60 days… so as of now, I’m not sure what will happen, because I was advised to take my issue to the police station.
Anyways, after unpacking in the hotel, our group went out to buy SIM cards for our phones to use in China. Keep in mind this is the first time most of us have wandered in Beijing by ourselves. Following my gut instincts, I started pointing to arbitrary directions to get to the store, and everyone followed. 5 or 10 minutes later, we realized that something didn’t seem quite right so I pulled out a map and discovered that we had made a mistake from the start. We should’ve made a right coming out of the hotel instead of a left. Not a problem… after another 20 minutes of following the map, we eventually made it to our destination and bought our cards. Success!
Later tonight, we ate dinner with some Duke alums working in Beijing at a restaurant called Lord of Salt, and yes, the food was indeed salty… The best part of dinner was after everyone left, and we tried making our way back to the hotel. You would think it’s as easy as getting a taxi and riding back to the hotel, right? Think again. It took us almost an hour to make a what would’ve been a 10 minute ride, because all the taxis were full/taken. Unable to find taxi at the restaurant, we started walking in the direction of our hotel, figuring that we would eventually see an empty taxi along the way. We ended up trying to get a taxi along the roadside of a highway, so it was a miserable FAIL. Finally, we walked to a smaller street more accessible and were able to get a taxi to go back to the hotel.
Whew, what a long day it’s been, and it’s not over yet. My mom’s best friend in college and her husband came to visit me. We chit chatted for awhile, catching up on life, and then tried to set up a time for me to hang out with their daughter who goes to school at 北大, show me around the place, I guess. It’s also a great opportunity for her to practice conversational English, because it’s hard to find people who speak fluent, unaccented English here.
After they left, I was finally able to relax and think about my goals and expectations for the summer. Quite a daunting road ahead of me, I must say… however I’m confident it’ll be do-able. Applying to med schools is rather stressful, selecting schools and filling out the application itself. Time management will be crucial since most of the daytime will be spent working on the DukeEngage project, and night time, I fear I’ll be too exhausted. *sigh* I’ll figure something out…
Tomorrow is a long day of DukeEngage orientation from 9 am to 7 pm. Oh boy!
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