First Day

I started off the morning waking up to meet Peter and Matt, the people I am traveling to Beijing with. We met outside Matt’s hall and after taking some pictures of the water and the view, walked up the hill to get something to eat. They had both arrived a couple of days before me and knew their way around campus enough to get us to the restaurant. At the restaurant they had many selections of Asian food plus a McDonalds, but I choose to go with the Shrimp Dumpling Noodle. The only silverware available was chopsticks and a spoon for the broth so I got to practice using chopsticks, which is especially difficult with dumplings in broth, and I ended up cheating for some and just stabbing them. At lunch we met a student from University of Illinois that had been here last semester, and he informed us of where we could get all of the things we still needed.

After eating, I went paid for my housing and then unpacked. I walked around campus by myself after that and explored down by the ocean. The view was very beautiful.

Later, Peter, Matt, and I met up and set out to find a beach that we could see was just down the shore a little bit. We eventually found the stairs leading down to it, and after a long but scenic walk which include seeing a waterfall, we arrived at the beach. We explored the shore a little and climbed on some rocks to try and get a little farther away from campus, but eventually they got too steep so we had to turn back. The beach had a lot of garbage washed up from the water which was disappointing, but the view was still very cool, and we got to watch the tide start to come in.  Our journey back up the mountain/hill was a lot more difficult than going down, which would be expected, but we eventually made it to the top, and then went for dinner. For dinner I had roast duck, and I got to see the guy who made it cut the head off of the friend duck, and then very quickly slice it up to put on my entrée.

After dinner I went to bed. 

Throughout the day it was annoying that I didn't have a key. Every time I wanted to leave I had to have someone lock my door, and when I came back have them unlock it.