Fun little note before you begin: I'm in Beijing at the moment, and I can't access my blog due to internet restrictions, so I'm having my parents do it from the Bahamas. See how hard I work for you readers? Or not. This week's entry:

So it's Week Number 2 in the awesome city of Beijing. I got in on a rainy Monday last week from Hong Kong, after waiting at the gate at Beijing Capital Aiport for more than two hours, thanks to a woman with an exceptionally high fever and a team of very thorough doctors covered in full body anti-swine flu suits, masks and goggles. I can't say it's been an overwhelmingly fun time, since I haven't gotten to go out much at all, whether with friends or just to walk around. I'm the only intern on this program with WISE Abroad, and the only one in my office under 33. I work in shipping and logistics, which is how things get from manufacturers to their designated port. I've done a lot of reading, a lot of scanning and a lot of translating. There's one proposal that I just finished translating from Chinese to English, and the last five pages have taken me three days to complete. There's so much specific vocabulary that comes with shipping that no Chinese class (unless it was a class on shipping terms) could have prepared me for it.

It is a bit of a drag though. My day starts out at around 6:30, where I grab myself breakfast in a flat that I apparently share with my host brother (who is currently too busy with work, so he lives with his mum, because her place is closer to his office), then I hop a bus around 7:30, and it takes me an hour. If I take the metro, it saves me fifteen minutes, only problem is surviving the bus ride from my flat to the metro stop. Space is a relative term: rush hour in the west doesn't mean that people will be all up in your grits all the time, so when you look down you'll find that there is actually someone's face about an inch away from being pressed up against yours. That's Beijing. Just when it looks like the bus has no more space, somehow, everyone magically fits on and breathes. It's really quite cool, and by cool I mean strangely fascinating.

The weather is another fun bit about this place. When the winds come through, there's no smog. No wind = lots of smog. It was so bad yesterday that I couldn't see the building across the street, and I could barely see the road from where I work on the 17th floor. The forecast holds that next week will be better, and I'm always amused at the air quality index that shows up on the weather forecasts every night.

I'm pretty much alone in this city, where I have a flat to myself, I have a desk to myself (in the corner, with a view when there's no smog), but I've got a host family that cooks dinner for me every night, so that's a nice bit of real human contact, if only for an hour and a half each day. I can't say I'm proud of how much I've navigated the city, since I'm in what one would call the suburbs, and central Beijing isn't walkable like central Hong Kong, London or New York. It's much more spread out. I was going to go walking about last Sunday, but I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to use my washer. In the end, I couldn't and resorted to handwashing like a good domestic, but my cooking host family came over and showed me what to do yesterday. Hopefully this weekend isn't spent so productively.

I'm starting to realize the awesomeness that is 5:30 (when I get off work) and the glory of Friday. I've got some friends in town from Hong Kong this weekend, so that's an excuse to check out some of the Beijing relaxation culture in San Li Tun, apparently a pretty popular place with young foreign professionals to grab a bite and a coffee. According to an alum here, the area's also home to the best burgers in the city. That's still a few hours off, but I could most definitely use a good espresso right about now. Til next time.