My first day in Beijing

Well as feared I'm not able to access my blog in China.  I'd done some
research on proxy servers and I thought I'd found a few that would work but
now that I'm here no luck :-(  I'm trying to download Tor (a popular VPN
for this kind of problem) but again no luck.

I arrived safely yesterday.  It was a long but uneventful flight.  They
served a couple of tasteless meals (including instant noodles) and there
was an extensive selection of movies.  I spend my first 2 hours in China
lining up for various things (immigration, baggage, taxi) and driving to my
apartment downtown.  My handler "Yin" picked me up and gave me a tour of
the apartment and the neighbourhood.  Today he's going to take me to the
police station to register, and tomorrow will be me up in the morning and
take me to class.

The apartment is a pretty basic student accommodation.
They provide cookware but we have to feed ourselves.  Not too big a problem
because there are hundreds of restaurants nearby!  They provide linen but
not a towel (Yin says, "If we provided one would you want to use it?")
It's in a regular apartment flat, there are lots of foreigners living here
but lots of locals too.  There are a few embassies nearby.  I'm in a 4
bedroom - there is one other student here now (from Hong Kong) and one more
arriving today.  we're about a 15 minute bus ride from the school.

I picked up a few necessities, such as chips (a Chinese version of
Pringles) and coffee!  Well, instant coffee, 3 in 1 instant with milk and
sugar (I figure Chinese coffee will need all the help it can get).  I'm
making one now so we'll see ...  Of course I had no clue for the most part
what I was buying.  I wanted to get jam and bread for a quick breakfast,
but jam and hot sauce look pretty much the same.  And I don't want to think
about what else might come in a toothpaste-looking-tube at the pharmacy.
Hopefully toothpaste, because that's what I'm using it for!

I've found that my Chinese is pretty bad!  I went out for dinner last
night, and of course none of the waitresses could speak English.  No
problem, I speak a little Chinese!  However my attempts were met mostly
with confusion and laughter.  Eventually I ordered a Carp served with some
kind of hot sauce and noodles.  Yin told me to say "wei la!" (not too
spicy) which I did, and they understood that part, however it was still
pretty damn spicy!  Tasty though, and I had a large beer with it.  (At
least I can successfully order beer.  As long as I can order beer I can
survive in China.)

A few things I learned:

为啦 - wei la - less spicy (not sure about the first character though)

买单 - mai dan - this means "cheque please", and you bark it out at the
server, or she just ignores you

推荐 - tui jian - recommend, as in "I don't have a clue what any of these
dishes are, what do you recommend?"

I'll post some picture soon!

再见！

PS  My first pleasant surprise - the air here is clean and fresh!