We had a slow start to Saturday morning, to give Adam and Latisha and chance to sleep in if they could.  Turns out, they couldn’t.  Both got up early and went for walks within and outside campus! Apparently they were doing some work in their building; Adam said the building attendant came into his room around 10 and started talking to him about what they were doing … in Chinese. Now some, when new to China (present company included), would have become a little concerned by this, not understanding what the person was saying, why they were in the apartment, and generally what was going on.  It may have led to thoughts of, oh dear, what have I gotten myself into! But not Adam.  As Adam relayed the story, “She kept talking and pointing to the ceiling and I thought, ‘Hmm, something is going on with the ceiling.’” And he left and went for a walk. At this point, I realized that our students are going to be just fine here. They clearly have the deductive skills to work out situations for which they’ve yet to acquire the necessary language skills.

We met up with Jon at 11am and went to lunch at the campus cafeteria. This place is amazing! There’s one entire wall of stall after stall of different foods. The students learned how to use their swipe cards, and even with little to no Chinese were able to order their lunch and get it paid for. No problem! I had knife cut noodles which is my absolute favorite Chinese dish, hence, the photo devoted just to my lunch.

After lunch, we headed out the west gate and down the road a bit to Wa-mar (not to be confused with Wal-mart, though I bet the similarity isn’t an accident). I had forgotten how great these huge Chinese shopping stores are.  Imagine one central lane down which you walk. To the right and left are side aisles, which almost always contain different brands of the same products. One floor is generally devoted to non-food items, and then there is another floor just for food. I was so excited to be back in overwhelming shopping heaven that I forgot to take photos, so I will be going back because you really must have a visual on this one!!

Then we were off for our official orientation meeting with Maria at their office a few blocks from campus. Maria began by opening the map of Beijing and helping Latisha and Adam get oriented to the lay out of Beijing, including where the subway lines run.

Beijing is really a very navigable city. The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square are at the very center of the city (the figurative center of the country), and comprise the first ring.  There are four additional consecutive rings around Beijing. So, all students really need to know is which ring they want to be on, and which cardinal direction.  The UIBE, for example, is just outside the third ring, to the northeast. Piece of cake!

We talked more about courses, their apartments, security, and all other important orientation type information, and then Adam, Latisha and I headed back to campus; both of them already knowing the way back.  We split up for short rests, and then met up again for dinner.  We ate at the small restaurant on campus where, for RMB 40 (about $7) we were able to get three dishes, rice, and tea. Not a bad deal! We had steamed broccoli, “fish flavored sliced meat” which is pork, bamboo shoots and mushrooms in a spicy brown sauce, and my most favorite “basi” banana. I have no idea what basi actually means, but the result is fantastic! It’s deep fried something (we had banana, but you can also get apple, sweet potato, taro, etc) in caramelized sugar. The best part, though, is that when you take one piece, you get these strings of hot sugar/caramel that come along.  The dish is served with a small bowl of cold water to break the string.

Then, it was off to bed, to get ready for another day of orienting!