Departure: June 19, 2005. 12:00PM.
Arrival: June 20, 2005. 2:30PM
Until: August 16, 2005

Beijing: 8:25pm 6/23/2005

Finally, three days into the trip, I'm able to get something done about how it's been. Right now it's Thursday night and we flew on on.....Monday afternoon. After a grueling 12-14 hours, we made it from O'Hare in Chicago to Beijing, then met up with the other study abroad students and took a bus to Qinghua University. After that we got settled in to our dorm and got some food, took a tiny walk around and passed out. Woke up the next day, Tuesday, and took a long tour of campus and then did some shopping - got a bike to roam around campus with and also some food and crap that I forgot to bring with me when I left. Really surprised at the room - it's really nice. We've got major AC going on and a tv and our own bathroom and single rooms....scary that it's actually tons nicer than my room at NU next year. I've got a tiny video of it right here if you'd like to check it out. Haha so far its been a lot of fun though....We've had two days of class already. How it works is that we get up at like 7:30 to go to our Chinese class at 8:30 until 11:30, eat lunch, then hit up a bus to the Capital Medical University to listen to classes on public health in China for 2 hours, we get back on campus around 5 and then are free to do whatever. It's really fun just to see all the crap thats different or funny...I'd have to say it was definitely cool laughing at the lego people at the baggage claim at Beijing airport:

The Tsinghua campus is definitely really big and really beautiful. Seriously guys, its like 5 NU's and maybe the size of UofI except minus the busses. its CRAZY huge. And its damn hot over here in China too like high 90's low 100's with lots of humidity and pollution. Thats seriously killing a bunch of us over here, cuz it gets hard to breathe and we're coughing a bit. But its still really nice with tons of plant life everywhere:

Good thing about China is that stuff is all incredibly cheap, I'm sure you all that've been here before know this for sure. Food and taxi rides and everythings else is really cheap compared to what we're used to in the states, so it makes me feel rich =). A side note to the IMSA people out there--It's weird how we're all around. I just got an email from Munan saying that he's here at Tsinghua at the building next to mine and then I saw Feifei at a bar....this has just been like 3 days too. I've gotta say though...the food here is amazing. You can eat really well with a group for only like 3 dollars US. And what they say is true, the beer here is cheaper than water which is pretty damn funny. I'm still drinking a lot of water though, its just so hot. AND I have classes I need to go to too, so despite popular opinion I am def not gonna be just chugging beer all day people. One of the first nights out for dinner:

That's about it right now, kind of tired and still have some homework waiting for me now. Look for a post later next week cuz I know there's a lot of stuff I'm missing...like all the great fobby english everywhere [except technically i think we're the fobs around here]. preview for next week: sign on the elevator says "you had better call the front desk if electric elevator is stuck"