Beijing, Prelude

Well. I arrived without losing my passport on the plane at least. Makes a dramatic improvement from Copenhagen eh?

A little fore-grounding might be needed so here it is:

The reason I happened to be in China for 3 or so weeks was because I was attending BFSU, unancronymoniously known as Beijing Foreign Studies University, and alternatively, Bei Wai. To get there I had to apply via an application form, and go to an interview. Couple of hundred people applied and I got through. The rest is… history?

So the group arrived outside the Management School (save your groans, I already had one) at erm something like 6am? This was coming directly from the Sugarhouse, which obviously was a class idea. Going so quickly from there kinda made it feel like I didn’t finish 2nd year though… you know I didn’t have the whole goodbyes that I had in first year, or the hungover reminiscing. Actually it was more like.. I landed from CPH, immediately was sucked into the whole going out/last minute extrav prep and then bang I’m gone again. Quite the weird feeling.

Anyway, I was still in my pyjamas from shagga (shagga sleep over, I swear only 4 people including me had pj’s on but whatever) when I boarded the coach. Which in the long run would be a massive victory for me, but initially some of the others couldn’t quite make out if I was in PJs or why I’d do such a thing. Another thing to mention I suppose, the group were a bunch of people I really didn’t know. Not as in barely knew, but I’d missed every single orientation session since I was in Copenhagen, and even though I had met these guys, it was once, ages ago. I really couldn’t remember alot of them. I can’t lie my first thought after realising this was “Ohh dear these guys are guna think I’m a weirdo in strangely attractive pyjamas”. Whether they thought this I’ll never know as I didn’t ask. Ha.

So we started our mission at around 5.10am. Coach trip to MCR Airport. Not so bad, I was still erm… buzzing with excitement so I was wide awake through this. I couldn’t exactly have had any sleep since I took all my stuff home Friday daytime so sleeping wasn’t an option and Sugarhouse was actually the smartest thing to do! The first flight wasn’t actually direct to China, it was just to Paris Charles De Gaul. Quite a nice airport I have to say. There’s not alot to say about this bit… I mean a plane is just a plane ain’t it. And airports are mostly the same so lets fast forward a bit. To landing.

We land at Beijing Capital International Airport at some unknown time because I’m really disorientated and only really care about getting off the plane by this point. Then we’re told that we have to wait for some Chinese officials to board the plane because of H1N1 aka Swine Flu. I actually had a bit of a cold so I was kinda worried that I was about to get carted away under suspicion of Swine Flu and would never be seen again. Luckily this ain’t how things went down. We did have to wait for what seemed like an eternity for them to arrive, and we were expecting a MIB style force to board the plane but it was nothing close to as cool. Just a few people who appeared to shoot at us with some phantom ray gun device which we still have no idea what it did. Swine Flu detector perhaps? Blah. Aside from that I noticed nothing strange about arriving, not like I had any expectations at all.

I suppose nothing could prepare me for the heat as well because after leaving the airport it was all a bit OH MY GOSH how hot is it. Then OH MY GOSH what a great decision wearing PJ’s not jeans. Ha. Alex 1, Beijing Nil.