It's 3 o'clock in the morning and I cannot sleep. When I woke up at 2:30, I thought it would be almost 8 and time to wake up, but when I checked the clock I saw I was about 6 hours off. It's probably because I went to bed so early, but I want to at least try to adjust to the time change. The first night is always the hardest. I wrote in my journal for a bit before going back to sleep. The next time I woke up, I expected it to be at least 7, but it was still only 4:30. I read my book for a bit before my eyes drifted shut once again. When I woke up again at 6, I decided there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep, but I felt like I was adjusted enough to the time. Alex woke up around the same time and we talked a bit before showering and heading down to breakfast.

The water in China is not safe for drinking because of the pollution and the shower water smells a bit funny, but it still felt good to be clean(ish). We boiled water to wash our faces, brushed our teeth with the water from our water bottles and then went to the restaurant on the first floor of our hostel. I ordered a bowl of porridge and some fruit. The porridge is a bit like oatmeal, but has rice and some kind of bean instead of oats. You eat it from a bowl with a short, rounded spoon that is wider and deeper than our spoons. Almost boat-shaped. The fruit plate consisted of watermelon and oranges, both of which were delicious - and I don't typically like oranges. I want to try some more of the Asian and Chinese foods, but I also think I should ease into them a little so I don't upset my stomach too much.

After breakfast, we headed back to our room with Amos and Jeff to use the Internet, talk, and call home (we found an Ethernet cable in the room that works for my computer too). It was great to talk to my mom for a bit and let her know that I made it to Beijing safely. The time change makes it seem like that Oreo commercial where the father and son are video chatting from China and the US. After eating their cookies, the son says good morning Dad and the Dad responds good night buddy, which is almost exactly what we did. It seems strange to think that I call in the morning and night here and there I will still be calling morning and night, but on two different days,

At 10 o'clock we went downstairs to meet Frank in the lobby for a tour of campus. He showed us where the faculty lives on campus and where we will have class next week. Just across the street from campus are several little restaurants and a supermarket/store called Lotte Mart. Behind that is a small market with rows and rows of fruits and nuts. The vendors stand outside all day everyday, even in this particularly cold weather, just to make a living. They have little rooms covered by comforters where we were herded inside and shown the various fruits that are available. They had apples and pomegranates and all sorts of other options, though anything imported is extremely expensive due to the tariffs. It is amazing to see that things that are not imported are surprisingly cheap. To convet Yuan to American dollars, you can divide by six and mostt items are not over $10.

Our first time on the street was so cool. We took a lot of pictures and got some strange looks from the locals, but in the market, people would say hello and talked to us as we walked by. The roads can be a bit of a hazard to cross because the traffic patterns can be a little confusing, especially with all of the bicycles and motorbikes, but it is not as dangerous as I expected it to be.

Our next stop was at a hotel near the university. There is a small coffee shop on the first floor for people who need coffee in the mornings and there is also a bank and several restaurants nearby. We stopped in a few of the restaurants to look at the menus and found that many are open late.

After our tour, we had some free time to come back to our room. It is freezing outside, even colder than it usually is in Beijing at this time of year. We are all bundled up, but many of the locals don't even have hats or gloves on. Alex's boots are not keeping her feet very warm, so when we got to the room she heated up warm water to pour on her feet and Ashley gave her some hand warmers to put in her boots, hoping that it might help for the rest of the day.

Our group met back at the gate around 1pm and we caught the bus and metro to Wangfujing, one of the most famous shopping streets in the city. It has been a commercial center since the Ming Dynasty. We walked down the Wangfujing Snack Street, where the sites and smells were different from anything I've ever experienced before. And the street foods were exceptionally exotic. They had starfish, scorpions, piles of worm-like things, candied crabapples, and many other delicacies that I could not identify. None of us were brave enough to try anything, but maybe before this trip is out we will gather our courage. The market also had all sorts of goods for souvenirs, including woven pictures, scarves, hats and other little knick-knacks. Sometimes the vendors will even forcibly pull you to their stands to try to get you to buy their wares.

We walked around the market for a bit and talked to our grad student guide, Jennifer, who helped us to get good bargains on anything we purchased. Jennifer also gave us some great tips and information about Beijing. Before heading back to CUFE, we stopped at the Beijing Hotel, the state-owned five-star hotel where Nixon stayed during negotiations for the Open Door Policy. It is also the site where Jeff Widener took the photo of the famous "Unknown Rebel" during the Tiananmen Square protests.

On the way back to campus, a few of us missed the subway because it was so crowded, but Jennifer was with us. She helped us get back and we got a chance to talk to her a bit more about her studies and her life in Beijing. She said that the city is not very crowded in comparison to what it usually is because this week is a holiday. Typically, the guards at the subway have to pack people into the trains to get them where they need to go. You can watch videos of this on YouTube. I saw them a while ago, but I wasn't sure if it was real or not. Unbelievable! I would love to see that, but I would not want to get on the train afterward.

When we got back to the hostel, we spent a little time in Michelle and Kari's room before going to dinner. Kari had been trying to get the Internet working earlier in the day and some of the people from the hostel came to help her while we were in there. They switched the Internet cables and took the one that she brought with her when they left. Fortunately, Kari is one person in our group who knows a little bit of Mandarin. She ran down the hallway after them to tell them the cable was hers, but she couldn't remember how to say it, so she just said, "that's mine." I think she may have gotten a strange look, but she did get her cable back and the Internet was working.

A bunch of us went to dinner at Long Table - that is not really the name, but the real name is in Chinese, so it is what we call it because it has a long table down the center of the room. In China, people typically order dishes to share amongst the table. We all ordered different kinds of food and planned to pass the dishes around to share. Brit and I got some kind of noodle and pepper dish and spicy chicken skewers, which were so good; Leondra had a kind of rice that had all sorts of spices on it, which I think included cumin, and a pastry filled with some sort of bean paste. It was really sweet, more like a dessert, but it was delicious. Alex got pork balls, which were sort of like meatballs, and those were also delicious. Michelle and Jeff got ribs, but apparently they were cold ribs. I didn't try any of them. Kari tried another kind of noodle dish, but it had meat in it and she is a vegetarian, so she passed it along and got a pastry dish too. Amos got dumplings and a pork or beef dish, but I can't remember exactly what it was.

Our food started coming to the table, but they brought several bowls of strange-looking soups. We were so confused about who they were for and we wondered if we made a mistake while marking our order on the little sheet where you put a number next to the items you want. We stirred them a bit to see if they might be something other than soup, then tried to tell the waiter, but he didn't understand what we were saying. The wrong dishes would go to the only table that doesn't speak Chinese. The table next to us told the waiter it was their food, which cleared everything up, and the dishes were quickly transferred to the other table with apologies.

Some people in our group ordered beer, which came in huge bottles. Everyone got a big glass to put it in, except for Kari, who got an orange, child-size glass. We gave her a hard time about being the smallest of our group so they though she needed a Sippy cup. I find it very interesting that beverages during meals seem to be optional. The waiter does not typically take a drink order and many people do not have drinks at the table while they are eating unless they bring their own.

After dinner, we went to Lotte Mart, which is sort of like a little mall and then downstairs they have groceries, clothes, household items, and all sorts of other things. My pillow is like a beanbag, but it is a bit hard and makes my neck stiff in the morning, so I bought I blanket to use as a pillow instead. We started to leave the store, but Jeff, Brit and Leondra were walking in the opposite direction, so I went back to tell them we were leaving. We decided we would meet back at the hotel and when I tried to meet up with everyone else, a lady saw me going to check out and noticed that the blanket didn't have a tag on it.

She waved me to go with her, but I didn't want to get separated from the group, so I tried to tell her I was with other people. She didn't understand and kept waving me to go with her, so we walked back to blankets and she wrote the price of the blanket on a card. I then tried to tell her that Alex was trying to get a blanket too, to get her to write down the other price, but she didn't understand. I went to pay for the blanket and then found everyone in the produce area. We wanted to get some fruit to have in the rooms, but we weren't sure what to buy and familiar fruits were imported and too expensive. We decided to skip the fruit for now and went to check out.

Alex didn't have a tag on her boots or her blanket. It took a long time for them to send someone back for the price and in the end he didn't even have the right item. Alex walked back with him this time and brought up the right boots. The guy at the register wanted to close and was getting anxious with his coworker, but he seemed amused too. We finally left the store and walked back to campus, but Amos realized that while China has no drinking laws, the beer he had just bought might not be allowed on campus. We covered the box with my blanket and snuck it back onto campus without issue.

As soon as we got back to the room, I got ready for bed, wrote and went to sleep.