I'm Here

The flight was not too bad, watched 4 movies and the time "flew" by. I had a seat in the middle right in front of the drop down projector screen which gave my row about 6 inches of extra legroom. Most people slept on the plane, but I didn't. I went to sleep at 8pm and woke up early the next morning, no jet lag so far. We have a little shower in our bathroom that works well but gets everything soaked in there. I am on the second floor, which is good because there are no elevators.

The food is interesting and plentiful. They bring out a dish one-by-one and place it on a lazy Susanne that you spin. My chopstick skills need lots of work. My host student was trying to teach me, but had to give up. I figure by May, I will have it down. Believe it or not its not just rice. They serve a lot of meat with a variety of different sauces. It gets weird when they bring out the fish, but other than that I haven't starved yet. Everything is pretty cheap here, but I haven't had the chance to do any shopping yet.

There are crazy drivers here and the traffic is basically 24 hour rush hour. We went on a tour to Tienanmen Square, but our bus took so long to get there that we only had like 20 minutes to look around and snap some photos. I will be going back there at some point, to explore the Forbidden City. The bus then dropped us off at a lake where we did some weird ice skating. They had these chair that slid on the ice, pretty fun. A Chinese man kept making us race.

Check out my photos here

I will add photos as often as I can. The internet is a bit slow here, so it takes awhile to upload them. OK, time for my next dinner adventure.

In about 17 hours I will be on the other side of the world. I spent the night in a nunnery in Chicago with others who are attending this program in Beijing. Everyone is excited and we are all getting to know each other. Most people go to one of the many Loyola Universities around the US. My new roommate Chris, is from Michigan and goes to Saint Louis University. He and I will be sharing a dorm room at the University in Beijing. We are in an international dorm which is supposed to be the nicest dorm on campus. The other dorms cram 6-8 Chinese students in one room.

I also met another guy who goes to Marquette named Ben. It kinda felt like an episode from the Twilight Zone when I met him, because my friend Ben from Watertown, looks just like this kid and also goes to Marquette. He is going to Denmark for the semester and has a really entertaining blog. Check it out here. After dinner, we watched "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon". I hope they teach me some of those moves in my Martial Arts class.

I am writing this the morning of my trip, because I woke up a few hours ahead of schedule and was too anxious to get back to sleep. From here I eat breakfast, hop on a bus to the airport and then sail off for about 14 hours to Beijing. I have installed Skype and my name on there is colingillingham. I am 13 hours ahead of central time, so we will have to schedule our phone calls accordingly.

Stay tuned, because the next few posts will be pretty interesting. Hopefully, I can take some cool action shots and get them on here for you all to see. Zaijian for now.

The Visa

Early Tuesday morning, my sister and I took the train to Chicago. I had to go to Chicago to apply for my visa. We made our way over to the Chinese consulate and waited in line. I tried my best to interpret the chinese being said around me. I could pick out a few words here and there, but they talk so fast. Sometimes it sounded like the Chinese people were angry, but it is just because it is a "tonal" language. They have words that require hard sounding tones, which in our culture can come across as aggressive and negative. I waited in line for about 5 minutes and they told me my visa would be done in about 4 hours.


My sister and I took off towards Michigan Avenue and got some coffee. We saw a cool blue Aston Martin on our way down the street, pretty cool. We stopped at Nike, Apple, and Gap on our way to the Millennium Park.

The picture on the right is of a crazy orb in Millennium Park, that reflected the surrounding skyline and interested spectators.

Sneak Peak of Beijing

Here is a little video, so you can all familiarize yourselves with the city that will be my home for the next 5 months.

China Briefing

I am starting to prepare for my semester long study abroad in China. I will document this experience through daily postings. Right now I am just trying to get everything organized for my trip.

I have been studying the Chinese language now for three semesters at Elon. In China, I will be studying at the Beijing Center. I will live in a dorm with other international students. I am taking 4 classes. Two of those classes are language study, the other two are martial arts and international business. I am starting my stretching now, so I can be the next Jackie Chan.

Arrival in Beijing on January 14th

Classes begin on January 17th

Arrive back home on May 19th