Well, after who knows how much flying (I don’t want to think about it) I am finally here. Where is here? Well, here is Beijing da xue. No real jetlag thanks to good sleeping (read “good drinking”) on the plane. But damn. It all went downhill the second I left the airport. An over-enthusiastic cabbie grabbed my stuff at 5:00am local time, and I didnt really care about the cost. It should only have been about 90RMB, but the fucker charged me 490 and took me to the wrong gate. There was no meter and I got no receipt. This led to me wandering around campus for about an hour or so, looking for dorm 9. After finding it, I had to prepay for 3 days, but the cabbie had wiped me out. FORTUNATELY, they took USD, and I had enough to cover it. I am staying here for 1 night, and then I move to #2 where it is $3.50 a night and has a roommate… who is korean 
It took me about half a second to blow up my surge protector… the ONE piece of electronics I have (apart from the adapter for the router, currently melting) that doesnt like the 220v 50hz here. I figured that it wouldnt care, and I ripped off the natural ground to force it to fit… resulted in me killing the circuit for the room. Explaining the problem took half an hour, fixing it took 5 seconds. This sent me on my first errand: find a powerstrip that works with my stuff, and a SIM card for the phone. Too bad it was 7am and nothing opened till 9. So, I bought some money and smoked/waited/explored around the area.
9:05 and I have everything I needed, went back to the dorms, and called up 田老师 to see what was up. She wanted info on the cabbie who ripped me off to sue him. I no longer cared at this point, and we got together for lunch. She ordered “spicy” food, but thai food from ee sane’s in milwaukee easily beat it.
Then I find the horrible truth of the LAB program….. I am the ONLY one here for it apparently. There were 5 others, and they all delayed till fall or went elsewhere due to the SARS episode in April. So, I have 2 teachers, a private tutor, and a program director… all to myself. They are going to let me join in on the CIEE program activities though. So, I am only alone for 3 weeks. Plus side is that I will be able to catch up to where I should have been when I was accpeted to this program. Chen Laoshi was cool enough to mislead them into thinking that I had actually studied chinese in a serious classroom environment. This is not the case. I am a beginner with kanji ability who thinks in SOV for some reason. So yea, they are going to be good to me.
I would have made this update sooner if it had not been for this cool firewall they have here on campus. It’s some sort of proxy that limits you to the campus network only unless you have a login for some proxy page that magically opens up the word to you. I wonder if I can get my router to do this automatically for me somehow.
My current mental state is dreamlike. This is so hard to accept that it’s like I am choosing not to. This should fade a little I hope. Hell, I have 4 months here, and this is just my first day. Tomorrow I move into a shitty dorm with a roommate who speaks korean, chinese, and a little english. Here’s a shout out to all you bastards who kept telling me to learn Korean too, I will probably learn some while I am here now.
Here are some pretty pictures to look at now.
Say hello to the cabbie who ripped me off
Pic of the pond
Another pic of the pond
I liked that pond
lol, this is the hellhole I want to move into. The “beds” are about half an inch thick and under that there is plywood. But, there is internet and a roommate, so it will be fun. And it’s only $3.50 a night, so who cares?
These bikes are only $15 each… and I am expected to bargain down to about $8!
