我在北京

I am currently sitting in the BCLU, and I am so glad to be here. The actual travel was very stressful. Our flight out of JFK was delayed by about an hour, and, by the time we (Stephanie and Paul—two other Yale students who are on the same flights as me) got to Shanghai after 15 hours in the air, we had to sprint to our connecting flight, which we boarded at Last Call.

Then, after we sat down, the pilot informed us that there was a Sandstorm headed towards Beijing and that we would have to wait 5 hours to fly out, which would mean that we would get to Beijing at something like 4 in the morning. About ten minutes later, they informed us that we would be taking off in twenty minutes. We arrived at the Beijing airport at the same time we were supposed to…even though we took off 45 minutes after our scheduled departure.

We arrived at the BCLU at 1:45, I got into my room at 2, prepared for bed, lay down and, after over 20 hours of travel, was no longer tired.

(My room)

I did fall asleep though, and woke up at 7:40 for my placement test.

What I find to be the most astonishing thing about Beijing thus far is how smoggy it is. I knew that the pollution was incredible after the controversy surrounding the Olympics held in Beijing two summers ago, but I hadn’t anticipated not being able to know where the sun was in the sky. At a Light Fellowship mixer at the end of the school year, one of the students I met told me that it would be the most astonishing thing, and he was right.

(The view from my room)

We took our Language Pledge a few hours ago, and already the second year students are finishing most of their sentences in shrugs and “ugh!”s. It is very bizarre to be in a state where I can’t say what I want to say. When I went to France with SYA three years ago, my French was good enough that I could understand everything and communicate most things. Not the case now. My French also has a tendency to invade my head when I am searching for a word that I feel I should know, but I don’t…