a-li-su

This is how I spent my day. After an early start I went downstairs for breakfast, left at 8:15 for the exhibition center. I am very wary of taxi drivers. A) they drive like maniacs with absolutely no regard for pedestrians or bikers and B) they seem to overcharge 30% of the time. The meter will very clearly read one thing, and they will give very less change. I think Deanne has it right. Whoever is sitting in the back should pay and they should take out their money (in change) well before the destination and ask for a receipt. That way the driver cannot see what you have in your wallet and there is less chance that they will not give you back all of your change.

So anyway, we arrive at the exhibition hall round 9 and it is far from being finished. To top that off while they were installing the Mars globe they ripped it so who knows what they are going to do about that. Amy and I immediately set off to putting together Lego rovers until she was called to take care of computer things. I worked on putting that damn thing together until 11:45 when Sherry told me we were leaving. Lunch came and was a very unusual combination of vegetables, meat fats and fish that was too full of bones to eat. But at least there was rice. So then we went back to the hotel and were sent to the grocery with a list of things to get from Sherry. We only had an hour to get there and back and after wandering around trying to find what we needed and where to check out, Deanne and I ditched our cart and went back to the hotel to shower and change for the afternoon.

So we’re all dussied up and we go to Tsinghua University to meet the dean. At this point it is Phil, Deanne, myself ant the TV crew form channel 8. We are met by this nice young teacher, who takes us to the Aerospace building where we meet the Dean and this other gentleman who does remote sensing for oil companies. It was very formal. We sat around this big oak table and the teacher brought us tea and the dean asked Phil a lot of the questions about collaborations and Deanne and I just sat there and listened feeling uncomfortable. Then the teacher took Deanne and I over to the lecture hall where we set up Phil’s computer. Phil and the Dean and Sherry and Jenni arrived shortly after and Phil gave a talk that ended with a lot of question for the students. I was really surprised at how much English the spoke and understood and how interested they were in the whole Mars thing. Then we walked over to the hotel at the edge of campus where we were hosting a banquet. Banquets are kind of weird. There was way more food that anyone could eat, lots of toasting and translating and formal toasts.

We were give nametags that had our name in English and Chinese. It was kind of neat to see how our names translate. It is a phonetic translation, but you can be creative with the symbols you use to make the sounds of your name. For example, my first name ends up sounding like A-li-su, and the symbols mean something like beautiful shredded fabric. Interesting huh? Baldridge is much more difficult, because the letters make much different sounds in Chinese and end up having about at many syllables as letters. The first symbol means “abalone” and makes the ‘ba’ sound after that I kind of lost track, but it was kind of like ba-r-da-r-ir-da-geh-uh. Or something like that. One of the symbols in there meant ‘morality’. Anyway, its kind of cool.

So after this long social/business gathering we came back to the hotel to get out of our stuffy clothes and go to the bar where Phil had offered to buy us drinks and we were supposed to put together the rest of the Rovers. Tim and Deanne seem very upset and cranky about the whole thing. Very unhappy about putting together the Legos. I don’t really mind, its kind of fun. Anyway, Phil said we didn’t have to do it, we’d make the High school kids do it for us tomorrow, but I was almost done, so even though everyone else had given it up I sat there and put it together while drinking beer. And its done and it looks cool, so I’m happy. Saturday is the first day of the exhibition. We leave early and will be there all day. Hopefully everything is finished.