“Beijing welcomes you”–that’s the translation, and it’ll have to pass for now without any of the tonal marks that denote how to pronounce the word. It also serves as the slogan for next year’s summer Olympics, for which evidence litters the city. It has been a lot of fun to try out the language and pick up some new words here and there. Additionally, the Chinese love trying out their English, and a little girl with pigtails on the bus ran through her numbers (1-99) for us while talking and giggling nervously. So far the people have been just great, inviting and real with us.

We are set up out in the northwestern quadrant of the city, in a hotel just past the west gate of Bei Da, Beijing University, where we are doing our classes until the 20th. The campus is gorgeous, though the sky is a brutal thick haze that never dissipates.  Also brutal was the first day of teaching.  I was paired up with another guy and we were told to go teach a group of junior high kids for three hours.  Needless to say, it could’ve gone better.  But, since that day, it has markedly improved and I think that by the time I get to Shenzhen I will at least be able to pretend I know what I am doing.

Our first night I went with my friend Andrew from high school (he is also in this program) and a girl named Anna, who speaks some Mandarin, out on the buses around Beijing whilst we tried to determine how to get to Tiananment Square.  While the journey did not reach its final stop, we did get sucked into a crazy, active area near the center with loads of people out on the streets hawking merchandise and chatting.  We settled on a dinner in a food court where heaping plates were served for just over a dollar each.  The food so far has been great too, and we’ve all avoided any averse reactions.

Last night we took a tour of the city with one of Anna’s relatives who was pointing out sights to us and providing Andrew and I with some Mandarin words as we try to build our communicative abilities.  We were left at Dongxhimen, just inside the 2nd ring road in the core of Beijing, where we strolled down a neon-illuminated street deciding on restaurants, settling finally on a hotpot restaurant that was filled with Chinese.  Hotpot is basically a shared soup brought to and kept at a boil; ours had a full fish cooking in it, staring up at us.  Communal dishes are then arranged on the table and you use your chopsticks to drop the food in, hunting it down and pulling it back out after its been cooked.  Was a very fun experience.

So far things have all gone smoothly and I am having a great time.  I will get a picture set ready sooner or later, but the uploads speeds here are slow so it may be later, we’ll see if I can get at least a small set started on Flickr shortly.  The people here are fantastic though, and Beijing is unlike any of the other cities and places I’ve had the fortune to see before, and I feel that the rest of the country will be the same.  I am anxious to better my Mandarin because I think the experience will be all the greater if I can hold a decent conversation…when that may happen though, I have no idea