Landed in Beijing...after spending a day on a plane

underHello to everyone again,

I think it's been more than a day since I last updated, mostly because I spent about 20 hours in transit to get to my apartment, whereupon I was both really tired, hungry and just wanted to get settled in.

Anyway, we got in Beijing at 11:30 am Beijing time and paid waaay too much for a taxi ride because we had too much luggage. It's fine, we made it to the apartment safely, despite all the attempts of the taxi driver to kill people in his way. We almost ran over these two students who refused to get out of his way nearby the school. As soon as we got to the apartment we settled down, bringing our stuff up and getting through the registration. I met my roommate who is a graduate from UCLA, actually a 5th year that is expecting to go to UCLA again for graduate school. Very nice guy.

Anyway, as soon as I got to Beijing I was really reluctant to put anything anywhere, I was always afraid that my stuff would get stolen. Anyway, there is a safe in the apartment and we were able to get it to work and put our spare cash in it. Tammy had to wait until the next day because her safe didn't have a battery. Anyway, it was really nice that we had that sense of security.

Much to my dismay, we had the bathroom in the apartment where the floor of the shower is the same floor you stand on when you are taking a piss and when you are washing your face. At least it was clean, I hope. We met a bunch of cool people that were mostly from places like UCI, UCSD, UCSB, not really very many from Berkeley.

After getting settled in and then just taking a rest and also buying a SIM card and international card, we just waited to go to dinner.

Let me first explain how frustrated I am with the entire SIM card deal. I ask the incompetent people in the US to tell me what I can do to unlock my phone or use it in China. Some guy finally tells me to download the latest software from the website to unlock it. So I do it and it seems pretty legitimate. I does a hard reset to my phone and everything is looking good. The entire process did take about 1.5 hours so I assumed that it would be working. I get to Beijing, put my card in and...what does it say? INVALID SIM CARD. What the hell?

That pissed me off. So I wanted to test it out if it still worked. I called Tammy's new SIM card and it registered on her phone as my house phone from the US. I was confused. Verizon told me to buy a global SIM card in order to use my phone overseas, but that would be the $2/minute deal right? Anyway, I would be able to use it if I didn't get the global SIM card, which I didn't but then all of the sudden I get a flood of e-mail, facebook notifications, etc. onto my phone, which means that I still have a data plan? There is no way that the SIM card was the one that transferred all that data. I really don't want to buy a new phone here, I would rather just use mine. However, for fear that I was using a killing on services in China, I turned off my phone and wrote my mom and e-mail to see if I was actually using these extreme services.

I also called my mom later that night, about midnight their time (sorry mom), and I got through and told them I was checking in and also if they could check with Verizon about my problems. It was fine and I got everything through that I wanted to, but then now, which is 8 pm their time and about 11 our time, I haven't gotten any news. Maybe they're busy, but I hope I get notice soon about what to do about it. I really want to call Felix and Ross's parents to see if I can get some nice dinners and tickets to the Olympics.

Anyway, besides those logistical problems I had a good night. We went to this place called Wu Mart, which is like the Wal Mart here and I bought some snacks, ramen, drinks and stored them in my room. After that 40 minutes or so of walking from the apartment to there and back, we were going to go to dinner which was down the street maybe 10 minutes, which didn't seem that far on the way there, which you will know what I mean soon.

We went there to eat and everything was spicy. DAMN! it was spicy, and I LIKE spicy food. Too bad for Tammy, it's ok I think she thought it was good too. Anyway, the group that I had dinner with, since the 24 of us had to split up, was a really cool group of people that I gope to hang out with in the future. We had lots of spicy food. A beef stew that people thought had cubes of lard floating in it, which turned out to be rice noodle cubes. We had an "anorexic" looking chicken, or so the table described the meatless chicken. We also had spicy noodles with shrimp, soo good. A liver dish, that people mistakenly took for beef, and a couple other things. However, the best dish by far was the mushrooms. OOHH babbby! There were different types of mushrooms and the sauce was soo good. The woman that served us was kinda mean or seemed like she was pissed off at us "wai guo ren", but in the end she was really quite kind and offered to take a picture for us. I hope she didn't spit in the food, hahaha whatever if she did. We drank Sprite, Coke, and someone had a beer at the table because we are afraid of the water. After that, and a flaming mouth, we were going to go back to the apartment, but WHAT THE HELL...there was a thunderstorm. It was raining and the air was cool, but you could still feel the stickiness in the air. We ran back, which was fun, but we almost got hit by a countless number of cars who probably couldn't see us in the dark.

The most fun I had on the run back to the apartment was on this path to that apartment which was completely unpaved and essentially a dirt road, which was no longer a DIRT road...which is why you know now that it wasn't a nice 10 minute walk back, as it was to the restaurant. I was happy though, and full, and my mouth was keeping me warm.

We made it back and people split up. Some people went to sleep, others went to take a shower, though we had already essentially taken one, and then some were going to go to a bar. I heard those people later in the hallway, drunk as hell and screaming.

I stayed with Tammy in her apartment, across the hall, for a while. I was slowly passing out, Tammy was talking to me, but I didn't really remember all of what she was saying. :( Sorry. But I'm sure it was very nice. Haha. After that, her roommate came back from the bar and I left to go to my room across the hall. I'm glad I took a shower and brushed my teeth earlier because I was not going to deal with it now. That's how tired I was. Basically I was deathly tired/half asleep.

Anyway, it was a pretty eventful day for the first full day I was in Beijing.