Morning Life

Hey everyone!

I'm now here and settling into life in Beijing. Amongst other things, it turns out that in choosing a Chinese name, I have inadvertently called myself Oreo Cookies. It makes the previous post all the more relevant! This morning I woke up at about 6am and went for a cycle around the campus. I took a few pictures of morning life to try to give a feel for the place. There were a lot of people up already, cleaning and brushing staff starting work, older people taking morning exercise and some tourists too. I'm getting used to being stared at and being asked to pose for photos with people's kids now. With new parents bringing their kids to start Uni, there was a lot of pointing and staring. Beijingers themselves are used to foreigners, so luckily they don't take much notice.

The campus is huge, cycling around it took me about 1.5 hours, but I wasn't in any hurry. Generally people didn't stop me, but I wasn't allowed to take photos in the Main Building, the security thought a Westerner taking photos at 6am was quite suspicious. I don't have my teacher's pass yet so I made a swift exit. I cycled down to the lotus pond and around the older areas of campus. Originally this area of Beijing was part of gardens owned by the emperor, so it is pretty pleasant. There was an elderly choir practising in the exercise area which is like an outdoor gym (complete with weights, bars and badminton courts), they were quite good, but seemed much more focused on joking with each other and enjoying the morning than singing.

I can't work out how to put the photos on here, but I will find out soon. Just getting to my blog to write this has already been a little challenging... I'm going to go eat some dumplings for breakfast now, maybe I'll have worked out how to do photos by the time I come back.