The first thing you notice is how grey everything is- what a shock it is coming from the almost explosive colours of Singapore to the drab grey everywhere here! Beijing is coming out of winter, and here and there you can see a splash of bright white as the blossom trees wake up to spring, but otherwise everything looks quite grey from the barren dirt where grass struggles to grow to the leaf-less trees.
And the next thing you notice is the traffic!! We were expecting traffic problems and we got an early taste of it; it took us longer than an hour and a half to get to the hotel! Traffic was bumper to bumper the whole way and we were treated to some unique driving maneuvers along the way... One of our girls was heard to remark "wow, getting a drivers license must be REALLY easy here" while others noted the interesting signage around the place. Olivia Ross made a special friend in a taxi driver parked across the road while we were at a longer traffic light and then decided not to wave at anyone else...
We finally arrived at our hotel accommodation. This is a Chinese hotel so things run a little differently to your usual Holiday Inn setup. For example, our accommodation is a separate building and there's no lobby. And while the building is only about a year old there's a few glitches like air-con that only half works and some dodgy electrical wiring that means some power sockets don't even work. But we're happy to be here and after half an hour to unpack and freshen up, we were collected by our hosts and taken to a banquet dinner opening ceremony.
We joined our hosts and the two other foreign schools (Crawford and Uplands colleges from South Africa) for the obligatory speeches and then tucked into some good Chinese food. The entrees included an interesting black 'thing' that some thought were mushrooms or even jellyfish - texture was crunchy-chewy and the taste wasn't terrible. It turned out to be black fungus, so mushroom was close. Otherwise it was pretty much standard fare, and very nice, but I was surprised at how little our South African friends ate- maybe they weren't hungry? It was pleasing to see our girls didn't hold back and tried lots of food.
Towards the end of dinner we were treated to some Chinese cultural items of music, magic and dance. For me (and I think most others) the Incredible Face-Changing-Man was the favourite. This guy performed a dance in traditional regalia and switched masks with a wave of his cloak at intervals during the dance. It was very well done and a good way to cap off the night. We returned to our rooms ready for some zzzzz's after being up since about 4.30!
Today we play sport- hockey and football, what we've travelled half way around the world to do!
Please forgive the lack of photos on the post today. We're having some technical difficulties with the blog so I'm writing this on my phone... Hopefully more photos tomorrow!
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