I’m finally settled at the Xijiao Hotel in Beijing, minus all my clothes. Since my flight to JFK from Rochester was delayed, my checked baggage didn’t make it to my second flight and will hopefully get here tomorrow on the next flight between New York and Beijing. As my dad said when I told him about this misfortune, “You are learning valuable life lessons, starting with the first -- airline service is lousy, and why we put up with it I don't know.” In the meantime, I brought one extra shirt with me and enough toiletries to survive until my suitcase travels halfway around the world.
The air here is about as smoggy as what I saw from the airplane when we landed – I couldn’t see down the whole block to the main street from the hotel when we went to get dinner. The air tastes and smells slightly acidic, but I’m getting used to it already. We got dinner (at 11:30 at night) at this restaurant a few blocks from our hotel that specializes in porridge. My table ate some sort of porridge with pork in it, shrimp dumplings, and this sweet milky dough bread thing – it was all delicious and quite unlike the Chinese food I’ve eaten in America.