China!

My flight was very long, but uneventful, which is good. Unfortunately I forgot to arrange for special vegetarian meals on the long flight(I haven't actually flown since becoming a vegetarian, it slipped my mind) so I ate around the meat. Just before landing they served what appeared to be the same kind of bread roll that came with one of our meals, so I bit into it, and it was full of pork. That was an unpleasant surprise, but it taught me a valuable lesson about checking the contents of buns before eating them.

I only spent one night in Beijing, so I didn't see much, though I did see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube, both lit up at night. It was beautiful. Yang Liangliang met me at the airport(Beijing International is HUGE! I took a train from my terminal to baggage claim!) and showed me around Beijing Forestry University, which he says has a student body of about 30,000 people. One of the girl's dormitories is twenty-two stories tall! We had dinner at a place next to the hotel, where I ate lotus root for the first time. It was sweet and a little tangy, like a radish that isn't hot, and it looked like lace. The beds here are very hard, like sleeping on the floor.

These are shots of my hotel room in Beijing.

I'm in Urumqi now, and the apartment has wireless internet sometimes. My room is great, and my professor's two-year-old, Ziya, has taken to calling me Jie Jie, which is Chinese for Big Sister. He's adorable.Today's a relaxing day while I get acclimated, mostly sightseeing and resting now that I've unpacked. Urumqi is interesting, it looks like it's constantly foggy, but it's actually pollution. There's barely any snow on the ground(which makes me feel silly walking around in my snowboots). I'm remembering some of my Chinese, which makes talking to Ziya easier. I'll keep you posted about further developments.

My work table.

My super-girly bed.

My awesome closet system and sunny walls.