In Beijing

I've made it to Beijing. I'm currently sitting in the new Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics which is on the campus of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It's a very nice new building. It just opened up in March, I believe. We will have our CSSS classes here during weeks two-four of the school. I'm staying at CAS for a few days, and then we head out to Fragrant Villa, a "resort" of sorts on the edge of the city where we'll be for the first week.

My flight to Beijing was long and largely uneventful. There was a pigeon wandering around inside the terminal at JFK airport, which I thought was kinda cool. The pigeon seemed quite at home.
I slept most of the way on the long flight from New York to China.

Beijing is hot and smoggy, just like I remember it. It's good to be back. The CAS and its surrounding neighborhood feel much more familiar than I had expected. There's an element of returning home that I didn't quite expect. Walking around the neighborhood today was nice, albeit very hot and sticky.

Right now it appears that I'll be able to post to my blog, but that I can't read any blogs on blogspot.com. This is annoying, but I'm not sure that there's anything I can do. Wikipedia is no longer blocked, at least for now. Last summer wiki was blocked and I couldn't post to my blog at all.

Time for me to get to work. I have a bunch of prep still to do for my lectures next week as well as some logistical stuff I need to work on.