Spare Time! Finally!

You wouldn’t think that finding the time to blog over a four day period would be that difficult, but when those days are your first four in China it starts to make sense.  In fact, I can’t quite believe four days have passed since my 20 hour plane ride finally came to an end.  The days since have been filled with seemingly endless visits to all of the most memorable Beijing sites (think Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City) , extensive lectures by TBC professors, whirlwind tours of the campus and jetlag induced bouts of sleep.  I’m not quite sure what I thought China would be like before I arrived, other than the usual assumptions of pervasive construction (even more than I imagined) and terrible air pollution (worse than I imagined).  However, the time I have spent here so far has shown me a diverse, bustling city that is seemingly always on the move, yet always stationary.  My experiences  are so defined by these dual notions that it is hard to wrap my mind around them.  Part of the day I spend visiting ancient monuments that have stood for hundreds of years without change and the other part I’m surrounded by an ever changing environment that seems unabashedly capitalist, more so than even the U.S.