The Return of the G

Yeah so I came back to China. I was looking at my summer and decided I
wanted to go to Beijing but had to wait until my NROTC cruise was
assigned to decide. I found out that would be June 21 - July 18. I
have to be back in Charlottesville in early August for O-Week so that
ruled out any possibility of seeing the Olympics, and I decided I
should definitely go play Wildwood with the boys in late July. So that
left the next few weeks until Devon's graduation to do something.

So I pulled the trigger on a round trip ticket to Beijing from
Richmond, made a fake reservation at the Swissotel in Beijing for 12
days and waited nervously as I overnight Fedexed my passport and visa
application to DC for some travel company to get me a Chinese visa.

I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with myself for the 13
days in Beijing. Would I stay in Beijing the whole time? All I knew
was that there was pickup on Wednesday night when I showed up, and the
China Open ultimate frisbee tournament would be that weekend. I told a
few Chinese female friends that I was coming, so I would have to
figure out how to split my time between them.

I'm going to write this as if I'm still there and its Wednesday night.

The flight was uneventful. Watched Charlie Wilson's War, listened to
my iPod, read Ultimate Tactics & Techniques. I arrived at the airport
and made it through immigration! All nervousness relieved (my passport
had no visa pages left, luckily they will stamp on the amendments
page) , I was in China. And at the baggage claim my bag was there!
Better than last time! A girl named Meg met me at the airport. I had
had a sort of romantic 1 month long relationship with Meg after she
asked for my number on the subway. She was a little too dramatic and
obsessed with love for me, but I've talked with her casually online
for a while so I figured I'd tell her that I was coming to China.

I told her I was meeting people to play ultimate that night, so she
was disappointed I wouldn't eat dinner with her. We rode the airport
bus into the city and split up. On the ride I didn't really have much
to say and it felt really awkward. The two issues aren't related, but
I started to wonder what I was doing in China. I just dropped a ton of
money to come hang out in a city for less than two weeks. Anyway, we
parted and I told her I'd get in touch with her later. At this point I
had no Chinese SIM card and walking alone on the street, so it wasn't
until I bought a new SIM card and got in touch with Jim Kirchhoff that
I felt like I was going to have a good week and not wander the streets
alone.

Jim was meeting folks to play disc golf (frolf) at Chaoyang park
before pickup. I took a taxi there, bought some beers to show up with,
and found Jim with some folks and was warmly welcomed back to Beijing.
Jim was with Char, Joe, and Tao. They were impressed that I would just
take a 2 week vacation to Beijing. We played some frolf, Jim and Joe
were slowly/quickly getting drunk as we played, and it made for some
good entertainment for the Chinese at the park as well.

Sandy Wang, a Chinese girl, another friend from the Beijing Ultimate
old guard (aka folks I knew in 2005), picked us up in her car and took
us to pickup. We played pickup at a turf soccer complex in the city,
it had a bunch of small 5v5 soccer turfs. Zahlen Titcomb and Jason Cox
were there. Pickup was fun, I got really excited for the upcoming
China Nationals tournament. Afterwards we walked to a restaurant and
ate Korean Bibimbop and of course drank beers. Some things never
change and those meals after ultimate were my favorite times of my
2005-2006 China endeavor. I went back to Jim's apartment where I was
going to be staying and then proceeded to sleep until noon. I was
tired and had been up for about 30 hours.