Hanging Out With Peeps, Post-Easter

I had a really great weekend. Slept in the new place, and it feels oh so fantastic. I did laundry for the first time last night, and knowing that it’s pretty easy to do was somewhat of a relief. I also met my roommates, who are two equally nice people. The girl who lives on the top floor of the duplex, Haillie, is an Indonesian girl who spent a good chunk of her teenage years in Kentucky and graduated from the “University of” right there in Lexington. She works in Internet Marketing as an analyst for a company specializing in placing internet ads on the websites of newspapers. She told me it’s pretty rough right now. The dude, Oliver, is a French grad school student who is actually only in the apartment for two more days. He’s doing his research and thesis on cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China, and the increasingly lax travel restrictions. He seems like a really nice guy. He had a hot girlfriend, too, which is never shabby.

I got to hang out with a Princeton ’08 kid who’s here in Beijing as a Princeton-In-Asia fellow working for an environmental NGO. Real nice dude. He was kind enough to show me around the city’s fun places a bit and I got to meet a lot of his friends and friendly random acquaintances. I found it really easy to meet strangers and I found myself hanging out with two Russian “businessmen” late one evening, which was entertaining. It seemed like their business was importing luxury vehicles into Beijing and the rest of China. I didn’t ask how legal their venture was, but from their general aura it seemed like they weren’t the sort to pay too much in taxes. Solid dudes, though, and really fun to talk with.

My job in WuDaoKou is fairly far from my apartment nearby GuoMao, and today was the first morning that I did my new commute. It actually wasn’t all that bad, I found, though I was really scared that it would take me a long time to get here. I set three alarms for myself this morning, which was lucky, because only one went off and I snoozed right through that one. I had forgotten that my cell phone also had an alarm in it, and that was the lucky charm this morn. The walk to the subway from the apartment took about 15 minutes today, and the whole commute….I’m thinking……maybe took an hour and 15 minutes. But since I don’t have to get into work until 9:30, it’s honestly not that bad. And probably good for me to practice, anyway. I think forcing myself to get up early is probably a good thing. Can’t hurt the whole self-discipline and routine deal.

I also became friends with the people who run a restaurant a few feet away from the entrance to my apartment building. They were really nice and spoke absolutely no English, but then the two guys’ little boy and girl came out and it was fun speaking a few words of English to them. They knew “Hello”, “Welcome to Beijing”, and “My name is N-I-C-K”. It was cool. I think I might have dinner there most nights from now on. Easy way to nosh.