Awake Hours Upon Hours: Day One

The plane ride, or should I say rides, was in a word, exhausting. I think we've been awake literally for three days, with very short lapses of shut-eye between. I probably slept the longest on the flight from Chicago to Beijing. That was helpful, but I most definitely woke up here in my new apartment at 6 AM this morning, finally rested. We got here and have already experienced what my friends call a "squatty." I think you can figure out what they are if you haven't heard of them before, but let's just leave it at the fact that it will remind of you camping, but worse. It is incredibly smoggy here. The air is like a white haze, to say the least. Very funny thing, our apartment has these awful bluish lights in the hallway (apparently, ugly colored lights are the bomb here, at right). We have a pretty good view of some courtyard type area below as well. The taxi drivers are insane here...it takes an intense amount of skill to drive as bad as they do, and I'm not even kidding about that. One of the guys told me that it's like this: In the States everyone assumes that everyone else will follow the rules of the road...but here, everyone assumes that everyone else will not, so therefore the driving is very strategic and aggressive. We passed our university last night on the way here, but I didn't really get a view of it. Guess that's to come. For now, we're working on adjusting to the time change and settling in to our new home. Bonus: I have a big black exercise ball in my room! These bottom pics are the view from my window. P.S. That's not a swimming pool, just a fountain.