大家好！ Today will be my first of many posts contributing to DJ’s BLCU blog. We are both taking this adventure together and hope to share some insight and all the good times we have in Beijing to you guysJ. I arrived first so I thought it would be appropriate to share my first experiences of BLCU before DJ. I was slightly anxious about arriving first as I would have to find my way to the university and secure our accommodation alone. My mandarin is at an elementary level which meant I could not rely on my conversation skills alone to get me there. Fortunately I know someone who is currently living over here and he was kind enough to give me the instructions. After taking 3 trains (since I did not trust the taxi drivers) I ended up in Wudakou, the district where BLCU is located. It was a bloody hot and humid morning and I was wearing jeans, a thermal and a hoodie…..yes, the plane trip was cold alright?! I ended up walking around in circles for about 30 minutes trying to ask various people where BLCU was. No one was helpful so I succumbed to the toothless grin of a dirty looking taxi driver. He was actually very nice about it all and led me straight to BLCU for 10RMB. China can be genuine at times! My misfortune did not end there however. I arrived at the international office and found out my name was not on the list of students who had reserved a room at one of the dorms. I slightly panicked and got a hold of Deej. His mum rang the office and she put him in his place. Shot DJ’s mum!

The campus is massive. Besides the many dorms its has basketball courts (incl one self enclosed rubber court), tennis courts, volleyball, table tennis, a gym, football field, track and field, dozens of convenience stalls, restaurants, cafés and a 3 storey dining hall – as well as classrooms, library etc.  

                           Hard day of walking around - we end up in our beds at 8.00pm lol
                                 

Our room is small, so small that our suitcases practically touch. I think it’ll be fine provided that my roommate doesn’t spill his beloved pistachios on my half of the room….We had our entrance exam today (I think it was called SEC but can’t be sure now). We both sat the level 2 test (ppl who know between 100 and 1000 characters). Provided we don’t end up switching classes DJ is in class B12 and I am in A11. The higher the letter and number the more advanced your class is. After the test we did a little exploring and saw some new places outside Wudakou. We ended up in a huge shopping mall and we had some sort of spicy steamboat for lunch but it was fried in a big bowl – not steamed. The chillies were so hot not even my spicy pallet could handle those things. I’m still feeling the side effects…

I’ll leave some of the quirkier stuff for DJ. I’m sure he will take pleasure in writing about our toilet situation . But stay tuned because we will be posting about all sorts including different challenges that have been set for each other. Some of them are gonna be hilarious J

Capt. America (post transformation ofc)