Tianjin Hotel

I will not be missing my tiny dorm room and community bathrooms!

pictures of my room

TJU card! They forgot to put my first name and just wrote Siu. I’m wearing the exact same tshirt I’m wearing in my GT card XD

Welcome banquet from Tianjin University

Today I woke up extremely early at 5 am because of jet lag. I was starving, I hadn’t had a decent meal since leaving Atlanta. So I decided to go out for a walk and maybe visit one of the university’s dinning halls. There were lots of people doing Tai Chi in the streets and nice calming music everywhere.

Figuring out how to buy and order food was quite a task! I must really improve on my Chinese. First, I couldn’t figure out how to pay. I saw some people paying with tickets and others simply swiping their TJU cards. After trying to tell the sales lady I wanted to recharge my card I finally figured out she was trying to tell me she wasn’t working until 9:30.  So then I decided I would buy tickets. I gave her a 100 and she looked at me with a face and kept pointing at a sign. I thought she meant they didn’t accept 100 so I gave her a 50 instead. She kept asking “how much?” I told her I wanted 50 since I assumed I would be eating there often for the next month. However, she kept asking “how much?” so I just said 15. She asked, “15? Really?” and I said yes so she finally gave me some tickets worth 15 yuan.  Later a Tianjin student I met at the dinning hall who helped me order food told me you can only use the tickets the day you buy them and when I told her I had tickets worth 15 yuan she looked at me with a surprised face. Apparently 15 yuan is too much for food even though the equivalent of 15 yuan is about 2 USD. No wonder the woman wasn’t accepting my 50 or 100! She must have thought I was crazy. I find it amazing that 2 dollars for food is too much. I met two other friends and told them not to buy tickets that I would share. With 15 yuan, the three of us bought food and drinks and I still have tickets left!!!!

Arriving to Tianjin

After over 24 hours of travel time I finally made it to Beijing.

My plane left Friday at 9:30 pm and I got to Beijing Saturday at 11:50 pm. I had a lay over in Chicago of 10 hours so I was able to visit a little bit of Chicago and some relatives that live there. Due to time differences coming here I have technically lost a day! When I return in August I will have my day back haha. It was interesting how as we traveled the sky got lighter and lighter. So we were moving from night to day and then night again. There were some interesting sights throughout the flight.

 

Since I arrived around midnight I had to spend the night at a nearby hotel until the next morning when a Tianjin University volunteer came to escort me to the university. I had a really scary moment at the airport, it didn’t help that my Chinese is not too good or that it was already past midnight. I don’t know if I was being a bit paranoid but I felt two guys were following me. If you’ve ever seen the the movie Taken, that’s what I feared would happen. The first guy kept asking me if I needed a hotel to spend the night and I told him no. He followed me where I went and was very insistent even though I kept saying no. After the third time of me ignoring him and saying “no, no” he got mad. and I just ran away, I didn’t even want to look back. Then there was another guy who started talking to me in the elevator, he followed me to the information desk, then to another office they sent me to and also to the telephone booth. I was really nervous because both guys were behind me and I needed to call the hotel but I didn’t want them to overhear me where I was staying so I kept changing places. I eventually lost them because I went all the way to another terminal so I was finally able to call the hotel and ask for a shuttle. I waited outside for the bus. A white van parked in front of me but it didn’t have anything saying it was from the hotel I had booked but a guy got off and he had a paper with my name written on it. After my incident with the other two guys I was a bit skeptical of getting in the van maybe they had somehow gotten my name. I felt like just spending the night in the airport since it was already 2 am. However, he had my name written correctly so I went with him praying my whole time in the car that I did get to my intended hotel destination. Thank God I made it safely. Then today early in the morning a really nice Tianjin volunteer, Guannan Su, came to pick me up and now we’re on the way to the University.

Lesson learned: be on the lookout! I’m not saying to be so distrustful of everyone but you have to be cautious and plan things well especially if you have a late flight. I should have probably planed better how I was getting to the hotel, who was picking me up and where we would meet. Beijing airport is HUGE!

Off to China!

Tomorrow I will be leaving to China! After so long, I will finally be able to visit the land of my ancestors. I am really looking forward to this trip. I will be studying for nine weeks and then I will spend about three weeks with my family traveling around. My first stop is Tianjin! Tianjin is the sixth largest city of China in terms of urban population. We will spend four and a half weeks in Tianjin University before moving to Shanghai, the largest city in China and the world. In Shanghai we will stay close to Shanghai Jiao Tong University for the remainder of the term.

Happy reading!! :D