First full day, July 9

I woke up at 3 a.m. cursing my professor who had predicted that we would all wake up at exactly that time. If he was right about that, he would probably be right about everything else, including saying we'd all get violently sick to our stomaches during the first week here. I didn't want to believe he was right about anything, so I refused to get up and meet him and a few other students at 4 a.m. to see the raising of the flag in Tian'anmen Square, apparently a rite of passage for Chinese tourists in Beijing.

After a few more hours of sleep (thank goodness!), I headed to the dining hall for some pointing and sign language to pick out my breakfast: a fried bun of some sort, a hardboiled egg, a yogurt drink, and a Coke--the quickest form of caffeine I could find to try to get rid of my jet lag and caffeine withdrawal headache.

The group had a greeting from the university and a brief lecture on China's history and culture by a film professor here. He raved about Kung Fu Panda and said that all the Chinese love it and can't believe that it was made by Americans. He has been to see it three times, and said it showed the creativity of Americans--only Americans would give a panda a goose for a father. The Chinese would give the panda another panda for a father.

I went with a friend and several of the Australians volunteering and living at the University to the Silk Street Pearl Market. Still tired from jet lag, my friend Aiden and I were too overwhelmed by the calls of "Pretty lady" and "You need shoes/bag/clothes/coats" so we went to walk along the street by the market, really our first walk outside of the university campus.

In the afternoon, we had a meeting to be fitted for uniforms, meet supervisors, get SIM cards to use in a cell phone, etc. The uniform sizing was predictably small, and some of the girls were in 2XL and 3XL pant sizes. Some of the guys ended up being measured at 6XL, which their supervisors said they would be able to get. Of course, tons of jokes ensued about how women or children would be sewing them that night. The womens shoes to try on only went up to size 8 or 8 1/2. I don't know if any of the guys had the right shoe sizes to try on--they were told to estimate their shoe sizes.

The highlight of the day was playing ping pong with some of the Chinese students on campus who are here to volunteer for the Olympics. About 7 or 8 of them invited everyone who wanted to play ping pong to come with them to a gym on campus that had 5 ping pong tables and I don't know how many badminton courts...maybe 10--I didn't see that whole room. They all spoke pretty good English, but it wouldn't have mattered if none of us spoke a word of each other's language as we were playing. It really felt like sports could bring the world and different cultures together. We were all having fun and smiling and enjoying being together--a perfect prelude to the Olympics. They were perfect hosts, and when we wanted to pay for our use of the ping pong tables (10RMB per hour, about $1.50, per table), we found out that one student had paid for them all. As we were thanking her, another student returned with a big garbage bag full of bottles of ice water for everyone. We all exchanged phone numbers, and they invited us to go out to karaoke some time. It really seemed like a dream or a movie, where everyone's faces hurt from smiling and no one has a care in the world except making sure he or she can get a hold of new friends again.

I knew I would fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I remembered to wet my toothbrush with water from our water bubbler. I walked into the bathroom for my toothpaste and automatically ran tap water over my already wet toothbrush. I didn't brush with it this time, though!