I'm Here!

Hey all,

I'm here! After a very, very long flight with a guy hacking up a lung behind me the whole way (it was quite gross actually, but I guess spitting is the norm here, yuck!). I completely lost Monday. Well except for the hour and a half in LAX. I managed to sleep for three hours straight and then off and on until 9 am AZ time, so I felt O.K. when we landed in Beijing at 5 in the morning. They had someone form the hotel pick us up so we didn't have to worry about haggling with the taxi drivers and the hotel let us check in early which was a relief. I couldn't sleep right away but ended up dozing off while reading and was woken up by my friends calling me for lunch at noon, so I guess I did nee a little more rest. The room is nice, nothing fancy, with a very firm bed, but it’s a bed and not an airplane seat.

We are across the street from the zoo (it cost Y15 which is about a buck fifty) and the Planetarium. I want to go see the Panda Bears! We are going to try to get a group together to go to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs when we are done with the exhibit. Deanne also wants to go take a ferry to the Summer Palace and I might tag along.

We don't really have anything to do until Thursday except put together Lego Rovers, so we'll probably get some beers tonight and get started on that. We have several receptions and lectures to go to Thursday and Friday and the Exhibit opens Saturday. It’s been all over the news here and they are expecting several thousand people a day!

I was quite surprised how much English is here. All of the street signs are in both languages. I guess that they are getting ready for the Olympics in '08.

I am trying to learn a little Chinese at least to be courteous, but it is difficult. To say that the difficulty is in the intonation is an understatement: the word 'ma' can mean 5 different things depending on how you inflect the 'a'. So far I know 'thank you': xiexie, 'yes':hao, 'no' bu, 'please':qing, 'tea':cha and 'beer': pijiu. Just the important stuff ;)



I still have to find an iron to press my clothes, but other than that I think I'm set. Hope all is well with you on the other side of the world, yesterday! I'll write more soon when I have more to report.