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Beijing Foreign Studies University, or Beiwai, is located in the University District in Northwest Beijing. The IES Director mentioned on the bus that there are roughly 50 universities in this district. We arrived at the school around 4pm hammered with jet lag.

During check-in, our group was split up in two; home stays and dorms. I’m not sure on the exact number but a little less than half of us are home stays. We find out who our new families will be on Friday or Saturday, but for now, we are in the university hotel. The dorm kid’s rooms are apparently not the nicest. They have communal bathrooms complete with Asian squat pots and more bacteria than people in Beijing. I haven’t seen their rooms yet, but I did here a disgruntled kid today at the market mutter something about “rice bags” while he and about 20 others bought pillows.

Homestay’s, however, are staying at what I like to call –the Beiwai Ritz Carlton. We have our own bedrooms, bathrooms, and living areas – very plush indeed. Our rooms are serviced daily, and now that I think of it, I might need to call concierge to get some more toilet paper. Many of us are joking, however, that this is to compensate us for the next 4 months of living with our home stay family.

This morning (Tuesday) we all took a trip to the Chiaoshita (Supermarket) and loaded up on the necessities. For breakfast we bought a couple bags of Baozii’s and Jiaozi’s (dumplings) for around 20 cents/bag and ate them along the way. IES requires us to have cell phones during our stay so we took care of that as well. I now have my very own Chinese telephone number! (see title)




For the rest next couple of days various orientation classes and information meetings are about all that is on the schedule. We have to take another language exam which no one is too pleased about; mine is tomorrow morning. Luckily I only have to take the oral portion. Unluckily I have to take the oral portion…
I think I actually start Chinese class on Friday, but I’m pretty sure they will be just handing out the info/syllabus for the course. On Saturday my homestay family comes to pick me up; that will be an interesting car ride back…

As for the rest of the weekend there is an acrobat show we can go to and a choice of two excursions on Sunday; (1) Hutong districts tour and Tian’amen tour (2) Cuandixia Village (about 90kl west of Beijing built in Ming Dynasty).