I arrived in Beijing, China on April 8th after a long but (thankfully) uneventful flight with ~17 other classmates from AOMA and our fearless leader, Dr. Shen (I’ll tell ya the gangsta monkey story later!).

I brought a book about train travels in China called Riding the Iron Rooster by one of my favorite travel writers, Paul Theroux. The book traveled with me everywhere but somehow I managed to read only a few chapters on the flight to Beijing and a few more chapters about Tibet on the flight to Lhasa. The other day, oddly, I found it in the glove box of my car (?!), perhaps waiting for my next flight.

At the Beijing airport, a tour guide and bus driver picked us up at the airport in a tour bus that would be our home for the next 4 days in Beijing.  The tour guide, June, spoke about herself in the 3rd person which became comical only after the initial confusion subsided from trying to locate this tour guide named June. We drove to the hotel as she prepped us for the upcoming activities while we were in Beijing.  She explained that we would be on our own for dinner and directed us to some restaurants and a 7-11 behind the hotel.

And so began our jetlagged, language-challenged adventure in China….