Day One in Beijing

After a 13 hour and 40 minute flight, I landed safely in Beijing at 2:30 pm on Tuesday afternoon. The flight didn’t feel as long as I expected it to feel. Between napping on and off, watching movies and reading, I managed to fill up the time nicely. The thing I wasn’t expecting, but it makes sense to me now, is that it never got dark. Everyone on the plane had his or her shades drawn and my seat was positioned over the wing, which resulted in me not being able to see very much. When the TV monitor indicated that we were over the North Pole, I had to open up my shade and look. From what I could see around that ginormous wing, it was a glistening sheet of ice.

The airport was stunning. I found out later that the whole airport was renovated for the Olympics. I was not sure about their laws about taking photos in airports so I wasn’t able to snap one. I didn’t want to cause problems first thing into the country. After an easy breeze through the foreigner security check, I picked up my bags, exchanged my currency and met Luyin, our Beijing owner of Romp n’ Roll.

Beijing is a lot like what I had pictured but less crowded, at least in the area that I am staying. Luyin has explained that the area where Romp n’ Roll is located is considered to be the Silicon Valley of Beijing. I am staying in an apartment building, an eight minute walk from Romp n’ Roll, in the equivalent of an extended stay hotel. My address if anyone wants to check it out on googleearth.com is Unit #502, Bldg. 5, Feng Niao Community, 33 Wan Liu Zhong Road, Haidian District, Beijing, China 100089.

Immediately after Luyin picked me up from the airport we drove straight to Romp n’ Roll. It is located in an office building on the third floor

The Romp n’ Roll sign will go up behind the desk tomorrow and the next few days will be spent organizing the art room.

Tomorrow I will be observing the gym instructors and doing further training on the classes. I am planning to take some more pictures of both Romp n’ Roll and the everyday sights of this area in Beijing. I should get some sleep now since it is 3:00 in the morning. 再见 (goodbye in Chinese)