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We’ve arrived in Beijing! It’s exciting to be here. We will be teaching at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) for Spring semester. We will be living in the Foreign Experts apartment building on campus. Our apartment was ready for us, so after greeting friends we collapsed into bed (we’d been up for over 24 hours). We crossed the dateline and numerous time zones, since we left Seattle Thursday morning, and arrived in Beijing Friday evening. Our apartment is huge, by Chinese standards. We have 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and a large sitting room. On Saturday we enjoyed a delicious lunch with Chen’s family, and then Chen took us on a walking tour of campus and the area. Many changes were obvious, though many things looked the same. Ab and I took a walk on Sunday, heading south on the Third Ring Road (several ring roads circle the city, like highways), and explored one of our favorite parks, Purple Bamboo Park. Many people were ice-skating on the lake. For dinner, we met Chen and his family at the Teacher’s Dining Hall, where we tried to figure out the procedure for ordering a meal. On Monday we took a bus (we even got seats!) with Chen and Liu Bing to the Summer Palace. We had a great time walking around the park, and catching up on each other’s news. Upon returning to BFSU, Liu Bing took us over to the university’s publishing house. They wanted some native-English speakers to be in videos they’re making to supplement an English textbook. They did a “film test” of us, wanting us to exaggerate movements and expressions. We felt very foolish, and were amazed when they called the next day to say they want us to start filming in February. It should be interesting! Monday night we had a great dinner at Jiaolan’s home. She was at Pierce 2 years ago, and she got so she could tell when Ab was going to tease her before he even opened his mouth! Tuesday we took a long walk out in the Western Hills, a park that has steps and walkways to the top of the mountain. On clear days, it’s a panoramic view of Beijing, but it was pretty hazy for us. That evening, we enjoyed jaozi (potstickers) at a local restaurant with the Foreign Affairs secretary and Shen Pi (who was at Pierce several years ago).
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