ok so things are going to get a little tricky chronologically here. I figure as long as I'm trying to catch up, I can't just write about what I'm thinking now. SO. I have a few empty posts that I'll go back and edit to keep things in a generally correct order but for now I just want to talk about, well, now.
So I spent a lot of yesterday dealing with where I'd be sleeping tonight. Calvin Xu (who I'll be working for) hadn't been able to find a place for me yet. I had contacted Casey from the Beijing Club dinner and he and his girlfriend offered their place for atleast the time being (later extended to atleast a week), but my parents weren't all that comfortable with that. Either way, we decided it'd probably be fine for a little while and I told them I'd be coming. Then my parents find an old email that some how slipped through the cracks from some really good family friends (The Hemmats) who are now living in the Yunan province in the southwest part of China. A Baha'i friend of theirs lives in Beijing and had agreed to house me. The email had been sent about 2 weeks ago, lol. So I went from nowhere to stay to too many places! All this got dropped on me while I was supposed to be walking out the door to our final group dinner so I couldn't really deal with it then (I was also talking to my parents a lot... and the time difference between here and there plus the fact that phone calls don't work between China and where they work plus they're cooky schedule makes this hard).
So dinner was fun. It took me like a good half hour to get a cab, but the drive to the Bund at night is cool with all the lit up buildings so it was a nice ride. We ate at M on the Bund which is on the roof of building 5. Everyone was just taking tons of pictures (I'll add some soon, they're still on my camera which is still in my luggage) and the food was delicious, expensive and ridiculously western. Not something I would have gotten myself, but since UVA was paying I was all for it!
From there we got a bunch of people to go to KTV. (Karaoke) and so we went back to the place we'd gone on Tuesday night. It was a lot more crowded and we had Hun Woo there. He claims that every single Korean family in the US has a karaoke machine in their basement for entertaining. It showed. While we mostly just picked songs that everybody knew and passed the mic around singing, Hun Woo picked songs for himself to rock out to, lol. Definitely a side of him I'd never seen.
From there, everyone was going to a club or bar or something so I decided to go back with Patrick to the faculty club. I was tired from being up late the night before talking to my parents and having people in my room until after 1 plus I needed to be alert the next day. Everyone else was just getting on 13 hours flights and could just crash, but I was flying to Beijing and would need to have my wits about me. I was really out of it the rest of the night. I was so sleepy I'd just go in and out of sleep, trying to call people and email people and then Jennifer was comign in and out and Patrick stopped by to get his thumb drive and I was just very much in a daze.
Today I got up at about 6. at 7 I went downstairs to say goodbye to Patrick, Shefali and Brian. at 9 I said goodbye to Professor Maxham, Andrew Baker, Mesouda, Judith and Stephanie. I then just kept on packing until quarter of 11 when I bid my roomie goodbye and went to get the front desk to call a cab.
The airport was a bit of an ordeal. I'd never checked in to a domestic flight on my own here. I couldnt find the check-in counter, first of all. and my bags were freaking heavy. 16 kgs over the weight limit in fact. and I think the lady rounded down substantially for me. a kg is 2.2 lbs, right? so 16 kgs = about 35 pounds... I feel like the scale said my luggage weighed atleast 45 kgs. Which is ridiculous. That's just the luggage I checked. It was quite the little system they had set up for paying for going over the weight limit. the counter kept my boarding ticket hostage while i took a little form to a counter on the other side of the room. she calculated how much i owed, gave me another form and sent me to another counter in the room. that guy took my money, sent me back to the second counter who took my form, did something with it and then sent me back to the original check-in counter. that might not sound complicated to you, but add in all the chinese people with no sense of a line (aka they cut you if you're not aggressive) plust he general high anxiety level associated with airports and it's a less than comfortable situation.
i got to the gate at about 12 for a 1pm flight. i started reading The World is Flat. I originally bought it because it seemed like a 'responsible' read. It almost got left in Shanghai because it's so freaking thick and I didn't think it could make it with all my stuff. Luckily I brought it because it's actually turning out pretty good.
the flight boarded... they managed to put the 4 white people on the plane together. i'm not sure if that was on purpose. my seat was pretty near the front and on the aisle considering i'd just bought the ticket on thursday. that's really all i can tell you about the flight because i was asleep instantly and woke up when the plane hit the ground in Beijing.
The cab driver that took me to Maryam's place was really cute. She and I talked (atleast a little... my chinese is super rusty) and talked to Maryam on the phone to get directions. when she couldn't figure out how to actually pull up to the building she got out and scurried around to ask people. so cute.
i finally got all my luggage in (through a revolving door, mind you) and got upstairs. Maryam has such a sweet apartment! we sat and chatted for awhile and then i used her wireless internet to blog and send out a mass email about the blog :)
we went out for dinner and then went for massages. 45 kuai for the both of us and they were sooo much better than the ones Karen and I got last week. They even massaged my head (and my eyebrows!). So yeah. I'm not sure what's on the agenda for tomorrow. I was thinking about heading over to the Silk Market to get some good shoes for work tomorrow. Oh well, off to bed!
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