Hello from Beijing!

We made it to Capital Normal University just fine, and have had our first day of classes. Today we toured Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City. It's HUGE!! I think I took about 150 pictures, and I'm probably in another 150 pictures by the Chinese. Especially when we did group pictures it was funny to watch 3-4 Chinese people snap pictures of us. We liked to smile for them when they tried taking pictures on the sly too. One guy was standing about a foot in front of us as we were walking across Tiananmen Square while his wife took a picture of him (with US as the scenery) so one of our guys, Sam, went up and put him arm around the guy's shoulder and gave a thumbs up. I think that made their day easily.

Everything here is super cheap! I think the exchange rate here is around $6.70yuan to $1US. So, breakfast at the street vendor for $3yuan was a pretty cheap risk. :) It was really good too! I would describe what we had as a sort of Chinese crepe. On a large round hot surface, the lady spread some pancake batter really thin, then cracked an egg on top and spread that thin, then she spread soy sauce (or something like it) on that and sprinkled green onions. Then she added a crunchy rectangular thing that I guess absorbed the fluids and added taste and folded it all up. Lunch was at the Chinese buffet downstairs for $15yuan, and dinner I ate at a restaurant just down the block for $33yuan. That one we mostly smiled and nodded and pointed at the menu. After the group last night accidentally ordering saki for the whole group at a Japanese place, we stuck with "Coca-cola". That's a pretty well known one here.

So, $51yuan...means around $8-$9US for all my meals today!!

We haven't been TOO adventurous with food yet, but we've been warned to take it easy with that at first. Some things may be "good for Chinese, bad for Americans".

Mostly, we all feel pretty ignorant for not knowing any Chinese, especially with all of the other foreign students here from other countries that easily pinpoint us as being "from the states". Many times we've resorted to asking the kid in line behind us if they can translate. And they understand us as well as Chinese, even though neither may be their native language.

We already have our first assignment, due Sept. 18 -- a 3 page paper on any subject we are lectured on. I also have to give my presentation sometime soon. We are supplied with a computer in our dormroom, and Internet is $2yuan per hour. I'm thinking now that I should have written this email in Word then copied it over while I was signed in. :) Oh well...$0.30US an hour won't break the bank this time.

I can't remember what's on the schedule for tomorrow. But I'm taking tons of pictures, and I will upload those to smug mug (photos.oc.edu) one of these days. I'll let you know when I do. Right now I'm really tired, but they just came to give us a computer. We had the monitor, keyboard and mouse but no CPU. I fell asleep reading a little while ago, but when they brought this in I had to send a quick hello!!

-- Amy

PS. On our way from the airport to campus, our driver took us past the Bird's Next and the Water Cube. Apparently, while it is not safe for us to drink the tap water in China, it IS safe to drink water from the Olympic Pool!! Plus, the pool was built deeper than normal pools, which helped the swimmers beat World Records this year.