Hi friends!!
I've made it, I've arrived (although that was a bit of an adventure), and I haven't freaked out yet. =) As far as I can tell I'm already on a China sleep schedule because by the time I arrived last night I'd gotten about 5 hours sleep in the past 48, so I pretty much passed out upon arrival.
Met all the other training leaders this morning, 23 of us total. A very interesting group, mixture of Aussies, Chinese, some British and Europeans, and 4 Americans including myself. This may be crazy to those of you who think I travel a lot, but I feel like my travel experience pales in comparison to many of theirs. It's okay though, because everyone's experience makes them unique, so I'm okay with that. I'm not even alone in the fact that I barely speak Chinese! Funny though, the Candian guy, the Arizona girl, and one of the Aussie guys speak the best Chinese! Because they've all been living here at one point or another. My roommate is a French/Spanish lady who's been living in Tibet for the past several years leading French tours there. Good gracious. We all just went out for a group dinner, with excellent Beijing duck, and lots of Chinese beer (surprised that I can still spell? ;-) For anyone who has the slightest inclination to come to China, it is worth it for reason alone of trying honest to goodness Chinese food - the real thing.
First impressions of Beijing:
1. Car horns honking.... ALL THE TIME
2. Busy, bustling, typical big city
3. They smoke indoors, but not as bad as Europe
4. I can't read a damn thing! Not building signs, not metro names, not a newspaper, nothing. <I think that's what is going to get to me first, although I really haven't let anything get under my skin yet>
Oh yeah, maybe I should explain the title of this blog :-) I know very little Chinese but I'm already recognizing and remembering some of the words I knew from last time I was here. One of the first ones I heard today was "jigga"! hehehe, in Chinese "jigga" means "there" but it is seriously funny to hear it come out of a Chinese person's mouth! Jigga what?! :-)
