北京 (Beijing) - Paralympic, Beijing University, Beijing cityscape

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It is much harder to be in "help your parents corps" than the Peace Corps, there I am with like-minded people of my age who immediately became good friends and we dove in intense training as soon as we got to Guinea. Here, I am with my aging parents who move at a snail pace, with no friends really. It was so great to speak to a couple of friends on Skype in English. I miss speaking English, I miss speaking French.

It is not easy to help your older parents, you want to do a lot of things for them but at the same time you cannot do too much for them, because they want to feel they are still independent and can take care of themselves. So you need to be careful not to hurt their confidence and feelings. A balance act.

So, going from having a lot of do in Peace Corps, having other teachers and students as friends, and feel very useful to - mostly hanging out for the moment and no friends here, it is quite difficult for me. I would trade my comfortable environment, electricity and running water for being busy and having friends. No joke. I hope that will change soon.
(anyone up for fried ??? how do you call it in English?)

Beijing University has such a beautiful campus, a great mix of water and mountain (more like hills) that are essential in any Chinese gardens. Lots of great corners to reculate oneself into the nature to read and think. I spent so much of my childhood here because my grandparents lived on campus. It is truly my childhood playground. I saw a lot more foreigners this time on campus and also in the streets of Beijing. Many on bikes, more at ease moving in and out of traffic than me.

Speak of traffic, it is very chaotic. Too many vehicles, too many motos, too many bicycles, too many tricycles, too many pedestrians, too many people/vehicles who don't follow traffic rules and traffic lights, because if you do, you will never get anywhere. Or maybe if everyone does, we might be able to get to where we are going faster? I don't know. Maybe I am just too new, and there is a orderly chaos that I am not used to, just like things are chaotic in Guinea, but there is certain order under the surface. I need to keep remind myself always watch out for turning vehicle, they rarely yield to you like we do in NYC even when I have the right of way crossing the street.

I wonder if Beijing has the most skywalks (built for pedestrian to cross streets) than any other cities in the world. An essential structure for the city, otherwise all the pedestrians who need to cross the streets will totally paralyze the vehicular traffic.

I was at awe of many new and very modern roads and highways, and spanking new buses with fully automatic card swiping system, much like buses I saw in Norway. Haven't checked out the metro yet. Okay, there is still at least one cashier on each bus, the reason being, one, there are too many Chinese who needs to work; two, to catch dishonest riders?

Very annoyed by too many salespersons at each store, who really don't know much of the stuff the store are selling or help you with stuff (ex. bath towels) that you really don't need help with. Again, we are too populated and everyone needs to do something to make ends meet. I still remember a few years ago when I was in Shanghai, having 3 waitstaff waiting at our table while we were eating.

Overwhelmed with uncountable skyscrapers and towers that can probablly make NYC pale in comparison. In NYC, it is a lot more compact (all the builidngs are next to each other, streets are narrow), here in Beijing it is a lot more spread out between the buildings, the roads are mostly 3 lanes in each direction plus a lane dedicated to bicycles.