Orientation for the Orient

Today was our orientation session which ran from 9 am until 4 pm. So many questions that I had were answered today. We started off by introducing ourselves and we have a big mixture of people from all over the U.S., 25 of us in total. There is one other Michigander, who actually grew up in Saginaw, so it's nice to have someone familiar with where I'm from. Most of the participants seem very well travelled, so that will make the trip easier. When I went to Romania there was one woman who had never really travelled outside the U.S., and she was a royal pain. She was the typical ugly American who made faces at food, complained about the culture, and complained continually until someone brought her to buy a hair dryer. There are a couple of people whom I have clicked with right away, such as the woman from Brooklyn who loves to try all sorts of foods. We plan on hitting the dumpling houses as soon as possible!

We were given the low-down on the situation with the H1N1 virus. (That's the Swine Flu.) The Chinese government is doing what it can to keep the virus out of the country, so people are inspected as they come into the country. This inspection could come in a variety of forms, such as walking through a machine that reads body temperature, having a team of people come on the plane in hazmat suits with heat reading guns, to simply asking the passengers questions about their health. We have a whole set of procedures of what to do in case we get placed in quarentine, which could be up to 7 days in a Beijing hospital or hotel. Even if we are not sick, if someone who is sitting near us is sick or has a fever, we could end up in quarentine. Honestly, the Chinese government is taking appropriate precautions. If it happens to me, what a story I'll have to tell. (It's not a story I want to tell, but you have to do what you are forced to do, right??)

We also got our passports back today. I feel so good being reunited with it. I was excited to open it up to see the Chinese Visa that said I had permission to enter the country. It looks so official! (Well, I guss it is official, isn't it?) It even has the Great Wall on it. If only there were a big panda in the middle, it would feel even more Chinese. At the same time as our passports, we received our stipend checks. Ah, money! How this works is we are all granted $3,800 from the NEH and from that our travel expenses are deducted. Whatever is left over is for us to spend. So I had to pay for the flights to China and within China, the hotel here, in Beijing and in Yan'an, and the dorm room in Xi'an. So that left me with just under $1,000. That should keep my in enough noodles and dumplings to survive.

After lunch, Professor Annette Juliano from Rutgers University, who will be conducting a large number of our sessions in Xi'an gave us an overview of what she will be covering in our lectures while there. We're covering a lot of ground in the month there, but I can't wait!