the first week or so.

Soooooo, things have been interesting to say the least.
I have officially been here in Beijing for about a week and it's been okay so far.
Beijing is a lot different than I would have thought. I mean, there were things that people told me to expect but this is definitely different.
Everywhere you look, everything is coated in a seemingly permanent layer of dust and the air constantly looks foggy from the pollution that's always hanging in the air. All the buildings look like they're in the middle of being reconstructed. There are piles of bricks/concrete/etc. all over the place.
The employees at the KFC and McDonald's I've been to are all women which is interesting to observe.
Everything is a lot more spread out than I would have thought. For some reason, I assumed that everything would be fairly compact like how it was in Japan but that's definitely not the case. Beijing is so spread out and BIG. But I guess that was already pretty obvious huh?
And I know this is probably going to sound incredibly ignorant but I still don't really feel like I'm in China yet. I feel like I'm in Chinatown or something. I don't know why but everything still feels really surreal.

My program is small, about ten people total (!!). Six of which actually live in the dorms. Me and another person are the only ones that speak any Chinese but I feel like I've been the one who's doing most of the speaking when needed. Which isn't so bad. It at least forces me to practice.
But it's just kind of weird I guess. Aside from me and another girl who's black, we're the only women/people of color in our dorm group. The other four are all white guys. At least in my Tokyo program, it was slightly bigger and I wasn't the only person of color there. Don't get me wrong, the guys seem okay and fairly open but every so often, they'll make comments like 'that's so gay' or other derogatory things. I don't think it comes from a place of malice but it still makes me extremely uncomfortable all the same. I know that I should speak up but by the time I've gathered my thoughts and know what I want to say, the time has passed and we're talking about something else. Not that that should be an excuse for the things they say, but I feel slightly pigeonholed again as the only 'activist'-y person here.
That and I realize that women tend to grow up fasted than men do in terms of emotional maturity [and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I don't have a bajillion moments when I act like a 10 year old] but I feel like the conversations here are sometimes so...kiddish. It's like 'y'all are in college now, grow up.' But I know that won't happen. Whatever.
I don't know. It's only been the first week. Hopefully things will be get better.

A Chinese woman randomly started speaking to us on the train and it ended up that I spoke to her for most of the train ride. She was really sweet and cute - I just wanted to hug her and put her in my back pocket! I understood about 80% of the conversation which I think is pretty decent. Apparently, at least what I gathered, she self-taught herself some English which I think is pretty impressive!
It's crazy to see how much construction they're doing for the Olympics. The train stations are a hot mess of new things being installed and you see these gigantic half-finished buildings outside everywhere.
Xanga is banned here!! Sadddddddd. And I can't access one of my favorite pop. culture websites: www.livejournal.com/community/ohnotheydidnt. How else am I going to stay up to date with useless information about celebrities?!
Other than that, I think I'm getting a little sick. Probably from the pollution and how dry it is here. Oy.