So the Pre-Orientation stuff was written as the days were going on. I was just unable to post. I've kept things mostly as they were and have added some notes when necessary. I apologize for repeated information.
Pre-Orientation Part 1:
So today I woke up at 5, made sure I had everything and finally began my adventure. It wasn't quite the restful night I needed to jumpstart an early day. I kept tossing and turning. I was nervous.
Needless to say the day didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. For one, I couldn't find my phone and so we ended up searching everywhere for it. My phone was also almost dead. I figured it was no big deal. I'd just charge it as I waited for my flight at the airport. It turns out something is wrong with the cord I brought with me. I should have known. The iPad I brought to Skype with people with was also just about dead despite being plugged in all night. So I did the sensible thing. I bought a new cord at the airport while waiting around for my connecting flight. Unfortunately, despite looking like the right cord, it wasn't. On the bright side, I have a backup now if something happens to my Nook charger.
I know I'm complaining a lot. The phone thing just kind of threw me for a loop. It was also just a long day in general. Our flight was delayed in Chicago. Not too long, about 40 minutes, but enough to be freaked out about missing orientation and having no way to contact American Councils without a phone. I ended up making it to Orientation just fine. Someone came and picked up the seven of us currently waiting. She said it really wasn't any problem. There had been some 5-hour delays earlier.
The plane rides in general wasn't all that bad. I finished Phantom of the Opera and felt more than a little hipster because as I read I listened to the Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical. On the way to DC, I scrutinized the other passengers. I thought there had to be at least one other person traveling from Chicago. There was, but I didn't meet him until later when we all laughed and told stories about our home states on the car ride to the hotel.
Almost everyone here is from a different state. There are a couple duplicates from New York and California, but that's to be expected. The closest person I've talked to is from Iowa and they were going to the other city. (Update: I talked to a girl today at the airport who was from Madison, Wisconsin, so that was exciting.)
We're apparently the "advanced cities" at this orientation. That of course means some of the students are incredibly fluent and can easily handle themselves in different situations. My opinion of my own skills keeps sinking by the minute. I'm definitely in for a rough time. Based on a show of hands, it seems roughly ¾ have already been to China in some way shape or form. Some have actually lived in China for extended periods of time. One girl for eight years. This trip will definitely improve my Chinese, but it's unnerving to have our resident director say things like "Well of course, you guys know how to say that" Um Not Really. Luckily my roommate has been incredibly kind and explained things about not only the language but also about China and the airplane trip to China. (I followed some of her advice about our first meal on the plane. She said that it was best to avoid any airline "meat" as it wasn't going to taste anything like you thought it would and it could make you sick. The pasta I tried was actually pretty good. At least better than I expected. About on par with Cafeteria food.)
Another slight dilemma was the fact that just based off when my flight left and came in, I didn't really eat today. I had breakfast at the Minneapolis airport at 7:30 and dinner at 5:30. Dinner wasn't even all that appetizing. I'm looking forward to all the Chinese food. Our resident director keeps talking about how amazing it is.
There's no Wi-Fi in this hotel so I'll probably end up posting this when I'm actually in China, after I have suffered an even longer day of travel. (HAHA sidenote from the airplane. I'm not really feeling all that bad yet. It's only been a few hours but the plane is huge. And I have more room than on the bus trip to New York with the Orchestra. )
Pre-Departure Day 2
I think I've covered that for some unknown reason my roommate and I were up early. We called the night before and went down to breakfast right as it was opening. This hotel is actually fantastic. The elevator is pretty cool. It's glass and the view of the lobby is incredible. The lobby is landscaped completely with a pond, Koi, a bridge and lots of plants. There's also a statue of a Giant Panda (hopefully I'll be able to see a live Panda in China.)
Colleen, my roommate, and I were some of the first people down to breakfast. The hotel breakfast was actually good. The pancakes tasted like actual food, not cardboard, and there was a chef that could make really good spinach and mushroom omelets.
Orientation was very informative, but very long. We spent the entire day in one room on the 12th floor of the American Councils building. It's hard to keep forty young adults (cough high schoolers and new college freshman cough. Sorry at Orientation the mantra seemed to be "You're not kids or high school students. You're young adults") in line for 10 hours. Some of the participants were a little rowdy by the end of it. I was definitely having trouble sitting in my seat.
We started the day with an excellent presentation from the State Department. There was a guy who had worked as a diplomat for quite some time but was currently on domestic assignment. He was very charismatic and had such a passion for everything he did. I've been thinking a lot more about the future recently. It seems only right. Junior Year is when you have to start exploring all the options of colleges and future career opportunities. I've actually even been thinking a lot about diplomacy as a possible career path. It combines my love of language, culture, history and civics. It was enlightening to hear someone speak who actually had the job. He also talked about the opportunities open to NSLI-Y alumni and other opportunities in general about interning with the Department of State.
I'm incredibly grateful that today I talked to some people who also felt like their Chinese was limited compared to some of our peers. It was just such a relief to find out I wasn't the only one who could carry on an in-depth conversation about politics. Our resident director also encouraged us and stated that we'd get the most out of this experience.
While we're in China, we're going to have free time, about two hours every weekday. And we're with our host families all weekend. Our Resident Director suggested we have a bucket list so that we would actually explore the city instead of just "hanging out". Colleen and I went downstairs to the lobby to use the computers to do some research. We discovered some really awesome things. Colleen has been to China already so she had some ideas too. So far I want to walk in the human sized hamster balls they have on the lakes in the parks, see the water/music/laser show on a fountain near the Wild Goose Pagoda, bike on the city walls, eat food in the Muslim Quarter, go to Tang Paradise and take a cable car up Hua Shan (that sacred Tibetan Mountain I mentioned in an earlier post).
Tang Paradise is a Chinese amusement park based off the Tang dynasty. There are acrobats, Chinese lion dances, stilt walkers and other cool cultural displays. It might be kind of touristy but I still think it will be cool.
I'm writing to you live from the airplane as we cruise over Northern Canada, basically the arctic. The flight is not nearly as bad as I anticipated. I'm hoping that's not just because we have 9 hours and 25 minutes left of this flight to Beijing. I'm not even really tired yet. People kept saying, "You'll be exhausted and sleep on the flight. You'll just nod off and you won't even know you fell asleep." So far, I'm fairly wide-awake and excited by the plane ride not sick of it.
I've never been in a plane like this before. It's absolutely huge! There are 3 sections of seats (3 columns with 3 seats each). I feel like I have so much room to walk around. I also have an aisle seat, but even if I didn't there would be a surprising amount of legroom. Each seat is equipped with a little television set. There were movies and TV shows, but I didn't really care all that much about those. I have so many movies of my own on my computer and I have some studying I want to get done before I meet my host family. I actually traded seats with another NSLI-Y student. He wanted to watch something, but his screen stopped working. I had been experimented a little with mine before take off. I couldn't get the settings to function in English. Every time I tried, it would be in French, Portuguese or Dutch.
I could get the settings to work in Chinese and was looking forward to starting the immersion process early. With some trial and error I was able to get Frozen to start playing. I was excited to watch Frozen in Chinese. To my dismay, it was in English with Chinese subtitles. Despite the fact that I had wanted to watch movies in English in the first place, I was disappointed. I was more than willing to trade my temperamental screen for a nonworking one.
The move actually worked out extremely well in my favor. I began conversing with the lady next to me. She was an American going with her daughter to China to pick up the baby the daughter was adopting a baby. She also had an extremely interesting job. She has traveled all over the world.
Airplane food was also nothing like I expected. I had some pasta (ravioli stuffed with cheese and spinach), salad, bread and a chocolate brownie. The pasta was better than my school's ravioli, although I don't know if that says more about airplane food or the food of Woodbury High School. It was actually warm too. I had a preconceived notion that airplane food would be all be cold and soggy. I thought it had to be a disaster based on how comedians always make jokes about it.
Despite the length, this flight is actually pretty cool. The only other negative thing I can really say about it is the fact that the air conditioning is turned on full blast. I'm not one to get cold easily, but this plane is cold, colder than the back of Killian's Chemistry classroom. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn off the air conditioners either. It's a good thing I moved my cardigan to my carry on.
Some of the other students and I have determined that our flights to and from China are basically time traveling. We're leaping forward now. We spend all of Thursday on a plane despite the fact we had a flight that left at 12:30 PM eastern time and our flight being only 13 hours. Then on the way back, we arrive only two hours after we left despite the same length of time on the plane. It's definitely amusing to think of the time zones as time travel. I'm sure Sarah would love it. (It's not quite the TARDIS but it sure is something.)
I'm excited to land in the Beijing airport. Apparently it's really pretty. There's also a McDonald's right outside Customs so I might be able to have one last American meal before I eat Chinese food for the next month. It's not like I don't want to dive right into all the delicious food. I just don't want to risk upsetting my stomach for the plane ride to Xi'an. The bathrooms are pretty small on the airplane and there's always a rather formable line. Colleen said during the layover (all three hours of it) we should find Starbucks (Xing Ba Ke Ka Fei or at least that's how I think the pinyin goes.) Starbucks are apparently rare in China, but the one's that exist are extremely good. By that point I think we'll be starved for caffeine.
I'm not sure if this trip will help or hurt my tea obsession. On the one hand, I'll be surrounded by delicious tea and not be thought of as strange because I like tea. (After all, everyone deserves tea.) On the other, I will be drinking tea at every meal for 6 weeks. That could make anyone sick of it. Either way, my suitcase on the way home should be very full of tea.
I meet my host family tonight, but I'll probably have more on that in my next post. I'm not sure I'll have the energy after everything. I think the urge to sleep has finally hit me. The airplane is dark and quite a few people are asleep, some have been since we went up in the air. I guess it's a good idea. Its 4:50 AM in China right now. I might be able to get a little over the jetlag. Either way I think this is a good place to say Zài jiàn.
Laura
Update: We're only currently flying over Russia, over Siberia. 1897 miles to Destination. We've traveled 5020 miles. We still have 3 hours and 50 minutes until we get to Beijing. I'm actually so tired of the flight. Getting slightly frustrated. I mean it's been a long flight. Also frustratingly all the windows are closed and everything is dark. I'm just frustrated. I've moved to another seat now. This one with a working TV. I've watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier. They gave us an awful ham sandwich and some really good gelato. When we land, I'm going to get some large heavily caffeinated beverage, possibly coffee, despite the fact I hate coffee with a burning passion. I've slept for a total of 10-15 minutes. I know it was around that much because I noticed how much I missed on my audiobook. Maybe I should actually sleep, but then I probably won't be able to sleep tonight (or tomorrow or whatever. We've crossed the International Date Line).
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