Bye Bye Beijing

Ni hao! I know that it has been a really long time since I updated this thing but I am finally back at it. I have been super busy in the last few weeks with my stay at Peking University ending and my brief return trip home.

I spent my last few weeks in Beijing spending time with my friends and enjoying the city as much as possible. My friends and I ventured to our favorite bars and restaurants for the last time and tried to enjoy as much of Beijing as we could with what little time we had left. Sadly, my studies in Beijing finally ended on August 12th and I returned home to Nashville.

Here is a picture of all of my friends from Beijing and my teacher Tan Laoshi.
Sadly my return was not without incident. My connecting flight from Tokyo to Detroit was suffering from a serious overbooking crisis and they told us that it would be a minimum of 2 or 3 days before we could return home. To add insult to injury the majority of my friends traveling from Beijing back to the U.S. were on a different flight than I was and everyone, save me and 2 other friends, was on a flight that had no problems.

Luckily for me and my friends we were able to secure passage on a different airline (free of charge) and make it on a flight to Newark. However, we couldn't make it out of Newark that day and ended up spending the night at the illustrious Newark Airport Ramada. I would have felt great about staying in Newark if it weren't for the giant billboard right outside of our hotel that read "Help Wanted: Please Stop The Killings in Newark." If that wasn't already frightening enough the moment I walked into the hotel lobby I saw the scene in the following picture. Yes ladies and gentleman, my friends and I were privy to the 1st Annual FurFinnity Conference of 2007. What does that mean? Well, your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that my friends and I spent the entire evening cowering in fear of the pack of animal-suit-clad weirdos running around the hotel. Needless to say, my welcome back to the U.S. was a bit stranger than usual. Luckily I still had fun hanging out with my remaining Beijing friends that night and we even managed to meet up with one of their friends who lived in New Jersey - escaping the fur fanatics and making our way to a local Applebees.

The next morning I flew out at 6am on my return flight home with a tinge of sadness knowing that I wouldn't see any of my friends from Beijing until January 2008 at the earliest.

My short stint in Nashville was a great breather from my previous 2 months in China. I was able to relax, recover, and see some old friends. Unfortunately I didn't have too much time and before I knew it I was already packing up again and heading back to China - this time to Nanjing.
I woke up bright and early the morning of the 22nd and hopped onto a plane bound for China.