After weeks and weeks of waiting and anticipating, I finally arrived in Beijing last Wednesday at 3:30 Beijing time (which I believe is 13 hours ahead of Illinois time right now). I felt like I was stepping into a completely new world. As nervous and scared as I was, excitement overwhelmed my whole being at the thought that I had finally arrived in China, my home for the next 4 months. Wednesday nite I met the other people in my program, and we all went to dinner together. I'm really glad with the group of people that I'm surrounded with. We are all quite different from each other with different backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs. Yet, for the most part, we all get along quite well; something I was very pleased to discover. My roommate is from Naperville, and she's really cool. She makes me laugh, and this past week we've had a lot of fun together. I thank God for blessing me with someone I relate so well with.
From Thursday thru Sunday, we had orientation for Alliance (my program). It was terribly boring. Our director went over hours and hours of unnecessary information that I'm sure we all knew but is Alliance policy to cover. We did get to go to Tian'anmen on Friday afternoon to see part of "downtown" Beijing. I live in Haidian District, the northwestern part of Beijing. The area I live in is quite nice, simple, and liveable...but it's no "downtown" Beijing. Tian'anmen was absolutely beautiful. As we walked around the area, numerous Chinese people walked up to us to take pictures and simply stare at us. It's somewhat annoying to have people studying us like we're animals, but it also opens my eyes to the lives of other "minority people" living around the world. How odd to think that people in Marshall and the surrounding areas look at my own siblings like that.
Other than going to Tian'anmen, we didn't do much outside of the dorm during orientation. (Sidenote: The dorms are surprisingly nice. As said earlier, I do have a roommate, but we have our own bathroom...granted the bathroom is actually a shower head hanging over the toilet with a sink to the side. Anyway, I hear our dorms are much nicer than many in the surrounding areas, because we're Internationals living in the International Dorm.) Today was the first day of class. I did very poorly and tested into a low level of Chinese; lower than I probably should have tested into. But I'm attempting to make the most of the experience. My Chinese is very rusty after not speaking for nearly a year. The review of simple grammar (yufa) and words (sheng ci) is good for me. And if the class ends up being too easy, the director said I could probably move up a class level.
Things in Beijing are SOOO different from things in the States, but not necessarily bad different...just different. There are too many differences to possibly discuss right now, but I'll be sure to let you in on several of the differences as I write future posts. I need to go to the market now and pick up a couple things I forgot. I will post again later. Keep me in your prayers as I attempt to figure out life in this place.....Love you all!!!
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