Travel to Bejing

Today, we travelled to the final city on our itinerary:  Beijing.  While our transfer from Chengdu to Xi’an took 16 hours by train, the plane trip from Xi’an to Beijing took less than 2 hours.  While the students enjoyed the train experience, I’m sure they also liked the convenience and speed of plane travel.

After arriving in Beijing in the morning, we visited with representatives of the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT), which is where we are staying.  I had the opportunity to interview several Chinese students from BUCT that may be going to SUNY-ESF to complete their senior year of studies through a dual-degree program that we have with BUCT.  Many of these students will also help our students with their touring in Beijing.

Over the next week in Beijing, the students will be visiting a number of different sites throughout the area including, the Great Wall, the  Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Olympic Village, the Beijing Zoo, and the Yong He Temple.  While the students are  visiting these sites, I will be visiting a number of other universities in the area with Dr Liu, who has made many of the arrangements for this  trip.  Hence, our students, with the help of students from BUCT, will be seeing the sights while I make these and other visits.  Beth Arthur, one of our graduate students on the trip, is also blogging at http://ramaraophdstudent.blogspot.com/.  Please also look at her site to keep up with the students.

Beijing skyline with Olympic Media Building in the background.

Beth Arthur presenting to students and faculty at Shaanxi University.