The first few moments of my life in China were surprisingly contradictory. I don’t know what it is I was expecting, but grassy knolls I was not. The airport was surprisingly grassy, and this would be the backdrop of my “Wow I’m in China! What the hell am I doing in China? But I’m in China! AAAAAAAAAAAH!” moment. China was, at this time, over reacting to H1N1, and had made us go through thermal scanners and had us go through thermal scanners, all the while with smiling eyes behind N95 masks. There was supposed to be a bus at the airport between the time of 3pm-6pm, and as I walked through the arrivals into a sea of Chinese faces, I saw no one with the promised sign of PKU/DBIC. Given my current mental state (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!), this worried me no end. As I walked up to multiple help desks and asked for their help to locate the bus, I was met with the same bewildered expression. No one spoke any English! You think they would, being the help desk in a major international city, but no such luck. I’m pretty sure the lady was talking to me loudly and slowly, alas in Mandarin. I was doing the same in English to her. Finally I had a passenger who spoke English and mandarin come up to me and help me out. He didn’t know much, and the whole encounter was fruitless, but I realized something. They help, they are willing to help. You have to ask, but somewhere there will be a pseudo translator willing to help you.
I finally ran into TJ and Chris, fellow IU students, and it was the single happiest event of the entire trip. Being lost and alone in a foreign city is not nearl as adventurous as Hollywood makes it out to be! We ended up taking a taxi home, even though it was 5:00pm, as the bus was nowhere in sight.
Later at the hotel we found out that the bus had gotten there at 5:30, instead of 3, and had waited till it was half full to come. Welcome to China!
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