My first Report from Beijing

All is well so far, I am making progress at installing myself in the land of the “Mandarines”. Let's see: in 2 days, I have managed to meet 3 guys who promise to help me: one on the plane over. His name is Pengsheng, or Paul by his American name. He is a professor of economic studies, at the University of Oklahoma, where he is doing 5 years, then back to China, to a city about 2 hours by train from Beijing, called Zibo.
He told me all his buddies from his old Beijing University now have important political positions in the Beijing government. If I need any help, I can call or write him, and he will do his best to help me out. Paul and I spent most of our time on the flight over discussing political and cultural issues. The one that got most heated, at least on Paul’s part, was the topic of the relationship between Taiwan and China. This is a very touchy subject for the Chinese, and they take anybody’s position about it very personal. They feel that Taiwan should and will be reintegrated into the People’s Republic, whether the Taiwanese like it or not. I beg to differ, at least as far as the methods of accomplishing this go.
Then, this morning in the internet cafe, I met Fey Yu, AKA Jeffery, a young student of Chinese, just graduating in his bachelor's degree, and he is assistant professor in the Language Institute, the very same one I will be a student in, too. He will help me find an apartment; he has also mobilized his buddies to that task. I'll meet him tomorrow morning, to set up a master plan for organizing the search. While staying at the MengXi Hotel, I corrected some erroneous English documents for them, unsolicited of course, brochures and such, which I found in the room’s informational folder. I took them to the assistant hotel manager, a young guy whose name is Water (don't ask me why, I have no clue, either). He was very happy about the good work I did for him, so he lowered my room rate considerably, to about 25 $ US/night, and he also promised to help me with finding an apartment.
Last night, as I could not manage to get online in my room, the technical manager came around and helped me with that. He brought his assistant along, and it took them til midnight to get me online. We had a good time chatting of this and that while they worked out the connection bugs. I must have been busy these 2 days, considering all I already accomplished or initiated here! And of course, my sweet friend Olivia, whom I have known over the internet, maybe short of 2 years ago, will help me this weekend, too, to go and look at available places she will have identified before then. And apart from all of the above, I have already managed to buy myself a cell phone, I know where the post office is, and I have done extensive shopping, all by myself, in the local supermarket. As you can see, I am not sitting around waiting for somebody to come and tell me what to do! More tomorrow! Be well y’all!