I haven’t packed any­thing yet, I have just found out I have a hole in my san­dals and I can’t find my tweezer but every­thing is under con­trol. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. But my pack­ing, that is.

Bei­jing, here I come. Or rather, Toronto, Helsinki and then Bei­jing here I come. You didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you? We are first tak­ing the Grey­hound to Toronto (no jokes please!). From Toronto, we will be fly­ing to Helsinki, Fin­land and stay­ing there for a day. We will then fly from Helsinki to Bei­jing. A mere two days trip (remind me to pack deo).

This week was of course extremely busy at work and I had to teach till the last minute. I had to run a lot of small errands but couldn’t find the time… so I ended up giv­ing a test to my stu­dents yes­ter­day morn­ing to pop into the bank (con­ve­niently located on Bank Street). Trav­eler Cheques, checked. Notice my bank I’m going to China (hint: don’t flag my credit card because you see some­one using in in Bei­jing), checked. Deposit my lat­est pay­check, checked. I had never been that efficient.

I had ordered three books from Amazon.ca ear­lier this week and I was amazed to see they were deliv­ered within 48 hours. Wow! I got Frac­tured (Karin Slaugh­ter), Secret of a Shoe Addict (Beth Har­bi­son) and The Third Vic­tim (Lisa Gard­ner). One day I’ll tell you about my book addic­tion. I’m this weirdo who read a book a day…

I have been to China four times in total: twice as a sum­mer stu­dent in 1999 and 2000, once to work in Hong Kong (2001) and once for a week-long stopover on my way to New Zealand. Last time I was in Bei­jing, I was 16. Long time ago…

I can still remem­ber how dazed and con­fused I was when I arrived at the air­port. I was all by myself, my first “big” trip. I was attend­ing sum­mer classes at uni­ver­sity even though I hadn’t com­pleted high school then. As my then-boyfriend has grumpily noticed, I was “doing every­thing back­wards”. I guess I still do in a way. Yet, I had loved the coun­try, the cul­ture, the expe­ri­ence. I was alone so I had to try to under­stand what was going on around me, I had to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple, I had to under­stand how it worked. Even­tu­ally, my life was greatly influ­enced by the trip. I dis­cov­ered I didn’t want to live in France and that I didn’t have to if I didn’t want it. That I could find true free­dom when trav­el­ing. I dis­cov­ered the world wasn’t as threat­en­ing and as dan­ger­ous as I had been told. This trip also of course led to a lot of late night Pink Floyd’s lyrics study (“we’re just two lost souls swim­ming in a fish bowl...”) and an almost lethal dose of U2 (“and I still haven’t found what I’m look­ing for…”). But I trav­eled a lot the fol­low­ing years and I have never regret­ted mak­ing the deci­sion of going to China.

I’m a grown up now (I like to think so any­way) and I can’t wait to see Bei­jing through new eyes. Now mat­ter what peo­ple say about China, the coun­try is still fas­ci­nat­ing to me. It under­went so many changes I bet I can barely rec­og­nize it. There are many myths about China and I hope I can show you another side of the coun­try, a side where peo­ple do talk about pol­i­tics, try to make their lives bet­ter by edu­cat­ing them­selves about the world, where peo­ple joke and make fun of their coun­try as well as them­selves.

I’m not sure how much blog­ging I’ll be able to do but I’ll try to post pic­tures like I did when I was in France. Don’t expect me to com­ment to much on your blogs in the next few weeks but I will def­i­nitely check my feeds. And I will be back in Sep­tem­ber.

On my way to bed and then to mid­dle earth! See you soon guys!

Related arti­cles:

1. Mod­ern Beijing （现代北京）
2. Bei­jing Memo
3. Bei­jing By Night
4. Old Bei­jing (老北京)
5. The Lord Of The Visa