Hello All,
I have successfully made it to China and am currently in my room at the Capital University of Economics and Business, which is close to the center of the city. The flight went by faster than I expected (it was almost thirteen hours) and there were wonderful views flying over the Arctic and Siberia. After landing, another girl I took the subway to a stop near the university. Both the airport and the subway are very new and shiny looking and quite clean. It also costs only twenty-five cents to ride the subway, which is convenient.
My room is in the foreign students area of the campus and setup like a hotel room. All the rooms are doubles, so I am sharing my room with another girl from Arizona. There are university workers who come every other day to change the sheets and towels and make the beds (lots of cheap labor in China).
Today we had a short tour on foot of the area around the university. There are many, many restaurants, although not all of them can be trusted for cleanliness, so it's best not to try new places more a month or so, until one's stomach has adjusted to different food and bacteria (as I was told by one of the teachers). All the teachers are very nice, but very serious about only speaking Chinese. We have not signed the language pledge yet, so everyone is trying to squeeze in as much English as possible before then. After the tour we went out to lunch at a tiny restaurant. They had tanks of frogs and fish at the front if you wanted to order those off the menu (we did not).
This afternoon, we had written and oral placement exams which were long and fairly difficult. They will place us into one of four levels in a few days.
About the pollution: When flying into Beijing, the first thing I noticed was how gray everything looked. Now, it is winter, but things looked especially bleak. It was difficult to see more than a few thousand feet because of the particulates in the air and all of the trees look kind of sad. The bushes around the university are covered in a thin film of dust. It was pretty clear today and the sky was blue, but the air pollution is still evident even though it wasn't as thick as the day before. Many people wear face masks when walking around the city.