Final Days

Our final days in Beijing have been mostly caught up with packing and tying up loose ends. Saying goodbye to new friends has caught us up, and tonight we had a dinner party at a former Purdue grad student named Tan.

She gained her Ph.D. at Purdue and now lives with her family in the suburbs of Beijing. The idea of suburbs are brand new in China, and a lot of people aren't very happy about the idea. They work against Mao's ideals of a collective community, or so the traditionalists believe, and having gated neighborhoods that have houses with their own private yards are very different than the communal houses of the recent past or the apartment buildings of modern Beijing.

We had to find our own way to the northern outskirts of Beijing, well beyond the regions that the subway reaches. After the subway, we had to make our way on the bus system, an option that we had avoided like a plague to this point. The busses are a lot harder to navigate than the subway, and the only way we made our way to the neighborhood was a helpful set of volunteers who knew where we needed to get off and actually escorted us there.

The neighborhood that Tan lives in was on par with the largest neighborhoods I've seen in U.S. cities, with large, very suburban style houses. Tan's house was beautiful, and her daughter turned out to be the life of the party. We had lamb cooked over coals and other delicacies, several of which were common in my China experience as I had no idea what I was eating. Anyway, the food was amazing, and after hearing the first set of fireworks at the Bird's Nest at the closing ceremonies we went inside to their film room to watch. We were a little upset that the CCTV cameras skipped over the American athletes at the ceremonies, but overall the ceremony was a good time. The London presentation, which included British cyclists Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton riding bikes alongside the bus, was crazy. It presented just how different the London games in 2012 will be from the Beijing games. The 2008 games were great in their own way, but London is going to come with a much different approach.

After Tan's fantastic dinner, we made our way to Sanlitun for the last time, joining the rest of the ONS staff for drinks. We essentially took over the whole bar while getting to get one last good night out with the Aussies, Ernst and Krystyna before we all go our separate ways. They actually ran out of beer at the bar we were at, but thankfully Beijing's cheap drinks helped us again. In all, it was a fantastic way to finish up the trip. The extended groups that we had formed in our nearly two months in Beijing all got a last time to see each other, and we'll all remember the night for a while.

We head home soon, so I will likely have one last post about my travel back to Purdue. Stay tuned for it.