Rollin' like a local

Today I finally met my Tsinghua buddy. If you don't know what I mean, try imagining a tutor, except personal one. Seems like every exchange student gets their own. My buddy is a from a minority group from western China. They have their own language and stuff and they are muslims. But my buddy also speaks good Mandarin and English, and today he helped me get a bike so that I can haul my ass around the campus more quickly. I'd better be able to, because the campus is huge. My legs are still sore after all that walking around bikeless...

My cousin got a few free tickets to see the paralympics, so I guess I'll tag along. You've read that joke about paralympics on the internet right? I'm going to be PC and not say it... But anyway, the tickets are for next Monday and Tuesday. I'm not that keen on sports (didn't watch "real" olympics either), but the Bird's Nest Stadium should be a cool place to visit. I saw it from the outside and pretty close the day we drove from airport. It is a very magnificent looking building.

Orientation day on Thursday. That'll leave me few more days to wander around this great city (getting around is a bit time-consuming because you can spend over one and half hours and twice on roundtrip, even on subway system -- things will get better when I move to the campus, though).