Hello from Beijing! above is a picture of me and one of my classmates, Ian, at our local police station. in Beijing for less than 24 hours...just kidding. we were getting our temporary residence permits so we could legally live in Beijing for 9 months. this is just before our orientation began on saturday. orientation is pretty fun. first, they sent us out in our advisory groups of about 12 kids to go find lunch by our school. our advisors went with us, but they didn't help. so, we wandered around and eventually found somewhere. we ordered by mainly pointing at pictures, but we got coke and sprite pretty easily. by the time we left the waiters were happy to see the back of us. and we couldn't give them a big tip because you don't tip in China. the waiter will run after you with the extra money thinking it was your change. our lunch for 12 people was about 250 yuan, which is about 36 dollars. no joke. other groups spent more, but we did pretty well. after we got back from lunch, we were split up into groups of about 4 and sent into the city by ourselves. when I say city, I mean around the school. Everywhere is the city because it is so big. we were sent on a scavenger hunt to find mostly information like where the nearest park is, how much it is to send a letter home, and how to get bicycle tires pumped. we had so much fun. we ended up asking people on the street where most of the stuff is in broken chinese. although when we were asking a few students about how many classes a day, they let us struggle in chinese before giving us an answer in perfect english. our conversation followed that same pattern of us trying to speak chinese and them trying to speak english. it was pretty fun. last night I watched some of the opening games live on the TV before I started to fall asleep. Jet lag is awful. I am usually ok in the morning, but by the afternoon, I am bushed. well, I will go eat breakfast now. 再见！