Thomas Jefferson, Allen Iverson, & soft pretzels

What do these 3 things have in common? Students in my classes are equally excited by them. I got the same reaction to them all in my first lecture (which covered where I'm from and the schools I have attended)
The teachers in this program are gobbed into one group to teach topics on "Western Culture"- but many of us are puzzled by how our knowledge of western culture is anything similar to our British counterparts here. Not only does our pronunciation and rate at which we speak differ, which has been slightly problematic for the students, but our 'pop' cultures differ. It reinforced how often we (westerners) label 'Asians' rather than natives of a particular country.

Yiheyyuan (Summer Palace)

This weekend we ventured to the Summer Palace- not too far from the University. It was an imperial retreat built during the Yuan and Qing Dynasties. It's full of man-made lakes and hills and beautiful!
My other weekend adventure:
5 taxiloads of us went downtown (of course we got separated) to find a bar only to find that the bar had been demolished in the last 2 months. So we ended up at an ex patriate bar where $5 will buy you 3 beers... sounds good to me! Then we headed (in the rain) to a club called MIX. It was a good time- I haven't stayed out until 5am in a long time! Getting back was an adventure too, even with someone with us who speaks Mandarin...

Ni hao!

I'm here:
I've safely arrived in Beijing and it is RIDICULOUSLY hot! The time is 12 hours from Eastern Time, so I haven't changed my watch, but I'm still adjusting to the change. I'll be teaching English classes to freshman at Tsinghua University (they call it the MIT of China) starting Monday. Other than being a little confused about how things work around here, I'm looking forward to it.
The flight:
Leaving Chicago, we sat on the plane (in the heat) for nearly 2 hours before we took off. There were some maintenance problems, so of course everyone was a little nervous, but once we were in the air it was fine. Oh, except for the fact that my friend Hillary and I were all the way in the back and couldn't see the movie screens. So, I missed the 5 movies they showed... It's ok- I really wasn't dying to see Robots or the Vin Diesel movie. Didn't eat most of my first meal either- all they had was beef by the time they got to us... gee, thanks United. Well, all that matters is that we arrived safely and the Tsinghua students are taking VERY good care of us.
Other news:
We purchased bikes yesterday (only $21!!!) and it's worked out pretty well so far. Many students say it's difficult to keep the same bike for all of their years in college because they usually get stolen. Some seniors are on their 3rd or 4th bike. Hopefully we'll be ok...