First week is finished and what a week it was! I visited the portrait of Chairman Mao at Tian'anmen Square and walked through his mausoleum, took a tour of the summer palace and spent a day climbing the Great Wall. Also had to take my Chinese placement exams to find out my classes for the upcoming semester. This week has been so busy that I can't believe I've only been here for 5 days. I've had so many new experiences and ate so much food. Living in China is interesting. Most people here don't really see foreigners much, so they're always trying to sneak pictures of you. Whenever my group stops to take a photo, a few Chinese people always run over to grab a shot. Some of them will even jump in! And walking around the city, there are always people staring at you. A few are brave enough to come over and try to talk with you, but most keep their distance and snap pictures. The traffic in Beijing is absolutely horrifying! Here, cars do not have to yield to pedestrians and most crossings don't have nice lights to tell you when you can and cannot cross the street. Cars almost always never stop, they will keep driving forward whether there is a person in their way or not. I can't even figure out why the have lines painted on the street. Most times I will see a string of cars driving halfway into a lane. I hope I never have to drive here. The bike and moped traffice is pretty bad too.

Today I got the hike up the Great Wall and it was an amazing experience! I had three hours to hike around and look at whatever I wanted. Our teacher took us to a more remote section of the wall, parts of which were falling into disrepair. It was nice not to have to deal with mobs of tourists. It was an amazing sight to see. It was quite a challenge. Everywhere there are stairs, so you are constantly climbing up and down. There is hardly any walking that does not include stairs and inclines. I was surprised by the level of difficulty present here, but it was an amazing experience. I'm sure I will be tired tomorrow.

The people in China so far have been very nice. Today I went with another student from my program to play basketball on the courts at the University. The students there were more than willing to allow us to join in their games and teach us new words while we were playing. In exchange, we taught them a few words as well. It was a really neat experience to utilize my Chinese skills to talk to someone who spoke minimal English. I've found that going out and talking to locals is the best way to improve my Chinese. It took me a few days to work up the courage to just go up to a random student on the campus and strike up a conversation. It can be very frustrating at times if I dont know a word or can't understand what they are saying, but it is overall a really neat experience. I'm really excited to be here and I can't wait to start classes on Monday!

Well here is my first post from the lovely city of Beijing China. I guess I should start off by introducing myself. My name is Janell McCarroll and I am a 4th year student at Drexel University, majoring in Chemical engineering with a Mandarin Chinese minor. For my study abroad program, I chose to attend the CIEE Intensive Language program in Beijing, China for my fall semester.
I just finished my first day of orientation and I’m completely exhausted. Left on Sunday from Newark and had a direct flight to Beijing. I ended up arriving at Newark 2 hours before my flight, which ended up being a good amount of time to get through security and find my gate. The flight to Beijing was super long. It was 14 hours of sitting crammed in an uncomfortable chair. At least there was a nice view of the mountains once the plane was over china. It was an interesting sight to see from the sky. Some areas hardly have any development and just have little clusters of houses here and there and then as you approach Beijing, everything looked more planned with straight rows of houses and a grid created by the streets. I was surprised that though it was an American flight going to Beijing, there was not much Chinese spoken on the plane by the attendants. I thought with having such a high number of people who spoke Chinese on the flight, that all directions would be said in both English and Chinese. However, this was not the case and almost everything on the plane was given in English.
Things got easier after my flight landed in Beijing. Thankfully the line at immigration wasn’t too long. I think out of the whole day I spent the most time waiting for my bags to come out onto the carousel. Waiting in the airport for my shuttle to arrive was a little unnerving. I could just feel everyone staring at me like they knew I was out of place. From there, it was a short 30 minute ride to the complex I would be living in. The neatest part of the ride was driving past the complex that was built for the Olympics. Sadly my camera was in my bag, so I didn’t get a picture. After arriving at Zhongguanyuan Global village (my apartment/dorm complex) I had to go through the whole registration and move-in process. The bedrooms here are pretty nice. There are 2 rooms to a suite and 1 person per room. Unfortunately all I have a view of is the building next to me. The bathroom and shower are a little on the small side, but it’s better than having nothing. I had a lot of trouble initially figuring out how to work the air conditioning system because all of the buttons on the remote are in Chinese.
After settling into our rooms, the group of students I arrived at the airport with and myself went out to explore the town in search of something to eat. It was quite an interesting experience. None of us had fantastic Chinese skills, so we were all trying to collectively decipher the signs to tell if we were looking at a restaurant or a bank or an electronics store. It was quite an experience. At one point, we were brave enough to ask a passing person where to eat, but they couldn’t really understand what we were asking. In the end, we ended up stumbling onto a nice Thai restaurant that had some amazing food. I managed to puzzle out some of the menu, but for the most part we just ordered by pointing at pictures and hoping that it was something good. The food tasted great, but I have no idea what I ate.