We are in Beijing!

Hi everyone! We made it safely to China. Whew! The train ride was a long 30h adventure and we got here yesterday night and were immediately picked up by our friend here in Beijing, Rebecca, and brought in to her college classroom at the University of Beijing where she teaches English and we were the center of a classroom conversation for the rest of class. Exhausting but fun and very interesting.

We spent the night on the University campus, but it smelled strongly of paint and was very dusty because it was under construction. I guess it helped that we hadn't slept more than 3 hours the night before (vodka + long train ride = disaster). We made a quick decision to switch to a hostel in the lama temple district of Beijing. We found a very nice hostel when a guy named Lee took pity on us carrying our backpacks down the street looking like lost tourists and offered to have us at his hostel. We are sitting in the hostel bar drinking our first Beijing beer and feeling much more relaxed already.

We were offered the equivalent of $100 to give a lecture for 2 hours in front of a group of 200 students about the US economy and the presidential election. What crazy experience!