My departure and arival to Beijing

Finally the day has come. I have been looking forward to this day for years. As I said goodbye to my parents and family, it finally sunk into me: I am going to China. We stepped into the car on this hot summer day, one of the few these last months, and off we went to the airport of Dusseldorf. One and a half hour later I arrived, said goodbye to my mother (she was the driver) and my adventure begins. A feeling of both nervousness and excitement went through me, as this was my first time that I leave to a far country on my own, let alone stay in a foreign country for half a year!

Walking around makes people hungry, just as it did to me. Here and there I had something to eat, including some nice pancakes. The first portion of pancakes I was supposed to get somehow exploded in the waitress’ hand as she was handing it over, which caused pieces of pancake to fly around over the bar.  Plate shattered, pancake everywhere, chocolate sauce over my hand, it was quite a scenario. I did in the end get a second portion for free, but what a waste for the first one to “explode” as the pancake was de-li-cious! 

There is only one thing remaining before I leave to China, and that is waiting…

Well, I didn’t wait that long there actually, only about 45 minutes. Got on board of the plane, chased some Germans out of the seat I was supposed to sit on, and laid back and enjoy the onboard entertainment… But faith didn’t want me to amuse myself onboard. There was no entertainment at all in the plane, so my flight became the longest 10 hours that I have experienced in recent memory.

The first thing I noticed when I finally arrived in Beijing is that everything is big. From the airport, to the flat apartments, from the campus to the city itself, the scale of things outweighs the scale of the Netherlands by at least 5 fold. It took me well over one and a half hour by metro to reach my hostel from the airport! Heat is another something you cannot ignore in Beijing. The best way to describe the feeling is as if you open a hot oven, and instead of moving back, you force yourself into the oven. Sweat covered my entire body within minutes.

I checked into the hostel, took a cab to Beijing University to meet my contact person, got a tour around the campus, had dinner and went back to my room to take a refreshing shower and we have ended up where we are now, and that is in my room typing thing blog entry.

Unfortunately I couldn’t take many pictures after my arrival in Beijing, but I promise you guys that in the future, there will be more pictures!

See you,

We Fong