Over the Top

NOTE: This is a repost due to some unexpected downtime.

I take off tomorrow for Beijing: 1.5 hours Pittsburgh to Newark, 13+ hours Newark direct to Beijing. We’ll be flying over the top of the earth, right over the North Pole. I hope to read and sleep the entire time; I’m pretty good on a long flight, but I’m still hoping for an empty row to stretch out in!

I start my internship at the Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship on Monday, so I have a couple of jetlagged days to figure out how to get there by subway. I’ve been told we have a 2 bedroom apartment in Sanlitun, which is kind of an ex-pat (ex-patriots = people living abroad) neighborhood full of people from places other than China. The upside is that the shopkeepers and cab drivers will speak English (and I hold out hope that I’ll find Diet Mountain Dew there). The downside is that it is slightly less authentic China, and also you do pay a premium for the the comforts of an expat neighborhood.  As for my Mandarin, I’m still at ‘this cat is black” so I’m hoping to improve that a little.  I did manage to get Chinese characters on my computer, though.