Ni men hao! We landed a mere 24 hours ago in Beijing after an extremely long and sleep deprived yet fun flight. I may have managed to get about an hours sleep on the plane but I was being fueled by the adrenaline pumping through my system! After landing in Beijing we immediately experienced the hot and humid weather on our way to Beijing Normal University's student accommodation at Liyung Apartotel. This is student accommodation like no other with a reception, a McDonald's connected through the lobby, a fridge in the room, daily housekeeping and much, much more. Its almost like staying in a 3/4 star hotel! The wonders of globalisation meant that my first meal in China was in McDonald's and though we knew little mandarin the words 'Big Mac Meal' is universally understood. Having unpacked we went for a midnight stroll around the block and met some delightful (drunk) American university exchange students who gave us the low down on the local area.

The next morning I woke up after just 3 hours of sleep ready to start the day of introductions (with an obligatory breakfast at McDonald's of course!). After registration and a placement test to check our mandarin skills we had a few hours to kill and so we set off to acquaint ourselves with the local area and to try to find some appetising street food. Having bought some spicy noodles for myself I tried helping Patricia buy some plain noodles which took us a lot of effort with me trying to say plain noodles by pointing and saying no (bu, bu, bu, bu) to every sauce, which the vendor thought was extremely weird and unusual! Afterwords having managed to get food some of us were stopped in the street and asked to pose for pictures with some of the locals with Seun proving to be the most popular amongst us. We were then told that in China people are a lot more relaxed when it comes to these sorts of things which also included asking ones age, weight and annual income. That over with we finally entered the University for the introductory briefing where we were asked to list our hopes and fears. Certainly the main fear amongst everyone in the group was the fear of offending the locals especially the families we'll be staying with. But most of us had high hopes of learning the language and making the most out of this experience. After this session we were taken on a tour of the University and myself, Seun, Aman and Asher were shown around by two BNU students Wendy and Nini; who were two excellent people and who took us to experience our first taste of student food in China and I must say it was some of the best food I've tasted and extremely cheap as well! A very detailed tour followed with Seun taking many, many pictures. The campus itself is huge and everything is located within a few hundred metres of each other. We kicked around a football for a while with some of the students and then I played a bit of badminton (a game I considered myself to be quite good at before I was outshone by the skills of the Chinese person I played). 

That was pretty much it for the day. We arranged to meet Wendy and Nini the next morning for breakfast to repay them for showing us around, then I came straight to my room to hit the hay. Its currently about 2am whilst writing this post, something I thought I ought to do before day 2. But now I shall be back to the really comfortable double bed to recharge for an intense day tomorrow and possibly even some karaoke in the evening! So for now Zai Jian!!