I'm the Dream Star

Thanks to Josh, Les, and Ben for putting up with me being the Dream Star. I cant help it, really. I dont mean to do it, really I dont.

Other thanks go out to Tim and Laura for sending me an awesome card, and Paige for calling me the other night while I was at work. Thanks to Jon for being forever encouraging. Thanks to Jenn for wanting to take obligatory MySpace pictures together and making me laugh.

Thanks to Ethan for a fantastic birthday present coupled with a wonderful day.



My plans for the next couple of posts are to start placing my china journal up here. It might be edited slightly, it IS a personal journal afterall, but I will try to include as much as possible... and if I can figure it out, I definitely want to get my powerpoint up online of the pictures so you guys can see what I saw.




China...
6/18/06
I figure its as good a day as any to start writing in here. Its Sunday, Farthers Day, and I have yet to pack. I thought I would kick this off with a list of things I need to pack and get done today...

1. photocopy materials
2. ref letters for interview
3. music
4. shirts and whistles
5. granola bars
6. unload camera, find container for other memory card
7. water bottle
8. all meds/bitamins/etc
9. some kind of book!
10. charge phone and ipod
11. water plants

Thats probably good for now. I admit that I am having some fears about this trip and I reallywish Ethan was going. Its a big deal to travel "alone" and I am nevous. I am particularly scared of how my stomach is going to handle it all. hopefully I will be so distracted that it will be okay. I cant believe its tomorrow... thats so crazy. excited? yes. Scared half to death? certainly. I hope I make close friends on this trip.

6/19/06

We are at the Doubletree Hotel in Newark NJ for the night. I am staying with Kate and we are watching 7th Heaven. AND I just found out that the cover [to this journal] has pen holes! Yay! The day has been anxious but mostly fun. The interview @ Boyertown went fairly well, but I will find that out in a week or two.

I am still nervous about going but its more of an antsy lets get there feeling. I just wnat to be on the plane already. I am pretty beat so hopefully I will get to sleep soon - after the room service!

1645 Wednesday 6/21/06

Madness. Been up approximately 24 hours. The plane ride was easier than expected. They played Hoodwinked, King Kong, & Wimbleton... never made it to Tristan & Isolde. I did not do anything particularly productive - though I did find E's note, it made me smile. I slept perhaps an hour or two. Meal 1 was "chicken stir fry"... completely awful! Good roll & brownies however. Meal 2 was ramen, which I downed instantly. Meal 3 was stuffed shells... yummy but I did not eat too much. [At this point, it was perhaps 4 or 5 am Eastern time, and they were feeding us stuffed shells. umm ew! not a good idea for my delicate body!]

I toyed w/ getting NJ postcards at the Newark airpot but I was too sleepy to do it... a shame bc Ethan would have laughed pretty good over that. Alas - perhaps on the way home.

Our tour guide's name is Wong Ting. Her adopted english name is Emily, of literary fame. She is adorable and reasonably well spoken... it is obvious she has "memorized her lines", but it is good. She will accompany us the whole trip and her voice doesnt annoy me, though [right now] I have to really focus to process the accent. That will get better, I am sure.

We are staying @ the International Hotel in Beijing. Postcards are 5 yuan, hopfully I will get that done soon.

First impressions of China... its 95 degrees F (35 degrees C) but not too humid, thankfully. Its grey, so grey. Its amazing bc they have well cared for gardens adn greenery... next to what we could call abject poverty. [We would see a beautiful garden and right next to it, a shack made out of scrap metal] There are high rises everywhere, most where people live look incredibly dingy from the outside. Its so intimidating to be here! To not know the language - to not be able to read or write or understand... its so daunting. [It really hit me when we got off the plane and there was chinese writing everywhere. Its beautiful looking, but I cant tell anything apart] At least in France or Italy you can pronounce it even if you do not understand it... but here, the pictographs are a mystery.

Our 5 star hotels room is small by american standards. 2 full beds and some cabinetry.... a desk, a chair, and full view of the street below... which happens to be full of traffic. I love cities, its good to be back in one, but I suspect I wont be too sad to be back [home] in the suburbs.

Beijing extends approximately 2 hours [driving] in every direction from Tian'anmen Square. There are 15 milllion people and 9 million bicycles. 2.5 million cars.

Its insane to think that this city is 1-2 years ahead of us in technology, yet you see people driving in a compact car from the early 90s. [The cars were hilarious things... very snub nosed and crunched up. They are so much more cost effective and practical than our SUVs, I am sure. I actually did not see even 1 SUV while I was there. There were some larger volvos and things like that, but not giant honkin cars like you see here. It was refreshing... but their cars were pretty ghetto. A lot of them had crazy car seat covers, or tons of stuff animals in the back window, which we really dont do here.]

The clothes are exciting and part of me kinda wished that my luggage didnt appear so that I could instantly get new stuff. No luck. [The clothes there are VERY cheap... and VERY small. I personally am an XL there, and you know thats crazy. Its not suprising that the Chinese think all Americans to be very fat. I mean, we are... but we ar ealso just larger. The Chinese eat almost NO dairy products, and thats what helps us americans to get so tall and strong. They are just tiny. Another interesting point about clothing is that most people there have a different sense of matching than we do... granted some people look very well put together... but in general they seem to pair clothes that we would not walk out of the house wearing.... They also all wore stockings, even when it was like 98 degrees... Emily wore stockings pretty much every day... they like to protect their skin... but again, im adding in too much! I wil have to add this stuff at the end!]

I must shower and change for dinner I suppose. ugh. it feels like 5 am. So officially 24 hours awake now on 6 hours of sleep... I cant wait to go to bed tonight!

2044

We had dinner @ a Sechzuan restaurant, which was in a hutong... That word means waterway or watertown and now refers to the small back streets that maintain the older culture of Beijing. [Beijing] has been the capital for only 2 dynasties while Xi'an was capital for 13 or something crazy long like that.

The food was amazing. It really was, but I didnt eat most of it. The best part was walking down this street lined with a particular kind of chinese weeping willow. people were out on the street, some running small shops. It was just relaly otherworldly. Their culture is so different and I wonder if the majority relaly know what the USA is like. No wonder daxed groups of asians walk around taking pictures of everything... its SO incredibly different! [Even our cities are totally different than theirs. Our buildings are so new and clean compared to theirs. They do NOT, however, have graffiti like we do... I didnt see any anywhere... whether thats just because the punishments are harsh there, or people just respect the public spaces, Idont know. But there really wasnt any.]

I am watching chinese tv... and I briefly fell asleep on the bus ride back. I exchanged $60 for a fair amount of yuan. I am not even usre and I am too tired to look. its about 8 yuan to the dollar, so I got enough to last for awhile. Its so crazy being here.

Hopefully sleep will give me a brighter and more articular mind to describe what I see around me. While we were out to dinner, maids stopped in and straightening the beds, put out slippers and robes, and closed the rapes. I am glad we put our passports and ipods in the safe.

Tomorrow is about 3 hours of walking and taking pictures.. hopefully jet lag will wear off!

To Be Continued... in future posts....