Right Before the Journey Begins....

Oh, jubilation! After roughly two whole weeks, I’m finally able to update on all the past happenings…. or, at least begin to relate what happened. Chances are, it’ll take me several entries to record all that’s been happening here across the Pacific.

I’d like to start off with the Sunday right before my group headed off on our Silk Road Trip (all TBC students were divided into two groups, A and B, each of which started at a different end of our route across northern China). As soon as I awoke, immediately I realized I would be giving extra thanks to God that day for the blessing that He bestowed upon us;

Marvelous clear skies! While back home that of course probably won’t sound like anything at all worth getting even slightly excited about, you have to understand that over here, days like that particular Sunday aren’t exactly the norm as much as they’re the exception. Usually, a blanket of rather unattractive smog enveloping the city obscures any trace of blue over our heads.

 

Needless to say, we often don’t get much in the way of sunrises, sunsets… or anything more than various shades of gray. So seeing as how over here we’re going to be dealing with this on a regular basis, on the last day of the Silk Road Trip, several of us over dinner decided to name our filthy neighbor up above. At first someone suggested “The Constant Smog”, and then shortly afterwards someone else came up with the name “The Eternal Smog.”

And for reasons beyond me, we eventually decided on the name of Murphy.

Yikes, my apologies for getting sidetracked there. Anyhow, seeing as how Murphy had called in sick that particular Sunday, many of us were in high spirits. At least, those of us who were in the small group that traveled across the city to South Cathedral for one of the two English masses held there every Sabbath day. Leading the way were two of the Jesuits at TBC; Father Roberto, a Brazilian serving as our chaplain for the semester, and Father Emilio from Milan, Italy, both of whom have some background in Mandarin after living in Taipei, Taiwan for some time. (In the photo below, Roberto is the one on the left in the hat, while Emilio is the man on the far right.)

To get to mass, we all took the Beijing subway system, which I must admit is absolutely nothing like I would have expected; extremely clean, modern, not at all difficult to figure out, and the perfect means of transportation for a cheapskate college student such as myself, as every ride only costs 2 yuan (in other words, not even fifty cents). That's all of course because most of the system is literally brand-new, built specifically for the recent Olympic Games. Absolutely nothing is perfect, of course. It does tend to get a bit crowded, especially…. well, most of the time. But then again I’ve traveled the NYC subway system, so fortunately it’s not like people crammed like sardines is a new and shocking phenomenon for me.

After about forty-five minutes (it’s a bit of a hike from UIBE to the nearest subway system, but it’s definitely worth it), we arrived at South Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in the city (built and established by Jesuits, and then rebuilt after being wrecked during the Boxer Rebellion). The service itself wasn’t really anything too unique; it was more or less like any other Catholic mass. However, after being exposed to so many news things over the course of the last couple days, I actually found the familiarity of it all quite comforting. The only downside was that although the priest gave his sermon in English, his accent was still incredibly thick, so to be quite frank I was quite lost most of the time he was talking.

 

Once the service ended, some of the group headed back to UIBE to pack up, as group A was leaving later that day at about 6:30. The rest of us decided to stick around for a while, and followed Emilio to one of his favorite restaurants for an authentic Chinese lunch.

Alas, if only they had such strange yet tasty food back home in America!

Not too much happened the rest of the day. We returned to campus where I gathered everything for early next morning when I would be departing along with group B. Finally though, after several days of e-mail tag, I managed to get into contact with Matt Ryder, a Fairfield University graduate and self-designed Chinese Studies major, living right there not only in Beijing, but in a hutong neighborhood of all places.

Unfortunately, for now you’ll just have to take my word for it that I met him face-to-face in such a location, for apparently I thought it’d be a fantastic idea to forget my camera during that little outing. Hopefully though, I’ll have pictures later on, because getting to his neighborhood isn’t exactly a momentous task; all I need to do is get off at the right subway stop, and I’m literally right there in the neighborhood.

After we made our introductions to one another and talked for about two hours, I finally headed back home to Building #6 for some shuteye, for tomorrow was to be the very start of our journey along the Silk Road.