I woke up in the morning with anticipation in my breath. A bit of anxiety was also in my throat. Today, Aug 30, was going to be excursion day.

The teachers were divided into groups of four. One of the teachers had to be an experienced teacher and had a decent handle on Mandarin. The rest of us were just greenhorns.

My group consisted of Patrick Seifer (a long-time ELIC teacher going to Zhengzhou, Henan), Adam Oliver (Liaocheng, Shandong), and Deb Kleisser (Hohhot, Inner Mongolia). We quickly walked out to the street corner and hopped into one of those zippy little red taxis. This is when the real fun starts.

Let me tell you about Beijing traffic. Short and simply, you can call it organized chaos. One simple rule of thumb is that the bigger you are, the more right of way you have. The buses will often come close up to a car in front of them and honk. Basically, the bus is saying get out of the way. And, they have a solution to shoulder checking. You don't have to look over your shoulder anymore. Just keep your ear peeled for where the next honk will come from, then you can just get out of the way or not change lanes. Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be too much in the way of accidents. It sure looks like chaos, but it seems to work.

Also, there is a new meaning to looking both ways when you cross the street. I don't know about you, but at home I normally don't cross unless both directions of traffic are clear. In Beijing, just walk through as many lanes as you can and then wait till the next lane clears. Fortunately, the cars will dodge you when they see that you're in the way. I don't think they like the idea of a new hood ornament anymore than you and I do.

The taxi dropped us off on a street called Xisibei St. Our assignment was to just observe life in Beijing: The traffic, the street life, products for sale, the fashion, and more. We ended up stumbling across a wholesale type market. It was amazingly well organized according to Patrick. Each vendor had an assigned lot number. I think in most other markets, there are no such allocations. We also visited a Beijing department store and ate at a noodle place (there was a manhole under one of the tables in that restaurant).

After the excursion, we went to the ELIC headquarters in Beijing. It's a beautiful building in the west end of Beijing. The rooms were exquisitely made and maintained. There was a globe in the main sitting room that was made of different precious stones for each country. The rooms upstairs, where some of the staff live, were huge and beautiful by any apartment standard.

We just had a great time hanging out at the building. We shared with one another what happened to us and our impressions of the city. We had a meeting later that day, but that's not something worth going into details about.

Because of the time it takes to get from Beijing to Wuhu, my train was leaving that same night at 11pm. That meant I didn't have much more time in Beijing. I just spent the time before I left talking to some of provincial teammates. The night was short, but I had a lot of impressions from that night. You'll just have to sit tight until the next entry to hear about that.