wǒ tīng jiàn wǒ wàng jì. wǒ kàn jiàn wǒ jì zhù. wǒ zuò wǒ liǎo jiě - You can only understand something by trying it yourself.

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!

So, summer's almost over... (The Excuse-Filled Blog)

Ok, I know I said that I would right a bigger blog and wrap up my semester after I finished packing. And, technically, I am writing this *after* I am done packing. Only problem, that was three months ago. Oops :(

Well, for one I only finished packing about three minutes before I was supposed to get on the shuttle, and if I had waited to write a blog then, well, lets just say this would be an infinitely less interesting blog. And secondly, well, as I stated in one of my very first blogs, google sucks.

**rant warning**

You see, google, in an effort to personalize the world, decided that everyone in the middle east is not only proficient in, but prefers everything they do on the net to be in arabic. So, when I landed in Muscat and tried to go online, much to my surprise I was faced with every single detail of the page being in Arabic. Login? Arabic. Logout? Arabic. The little new post button? Arabic! Also, the layout was back-asswards. And when the thing would tell me things like "You've entered the password and the email in the opposite fields", IT WAS IN ARABIC! How was I supposed to know what on earth they were saying? ( At this point, if you say babelfish, congrats, you are much smarter than I was) So, I pretty much decided I'll wait till I get to China, and there it'll possibly be in English, globalized world and all.

/**rant warning**

So, I went to China. Which was awesome, but that's another topic for another series of blogs. There, however, not only was Blogger not in Mandarin, it was blocked! And there goes my entire idea of a "Life of Study Abroader - Beijing".

But well, I finally figured out that not only will China not get the almost Live coverage I waned to give it. So, I wrote some, and took some pics, and observed some funny things, some important things and some weird things. And that is what the rest of my blogs over the next few weeks will be about! Till then, ciao!