Celebration Dinner!!!

Tonight was Dr. Burgess's last night in Beijing so we all went out for a celebratory program dinner. It was a wild adventure! There was a HUGE thunderstorm in Beijing tonight. It poured for hours! This wouldn't have been such a big deal but it seems like the drainage system in this city is really poor. The streets were completely flooded. There was at least a foot of water covering the pavement.

The view of the flooded Beijing streets outside our van

Despite the crazy weather we still had to make it to our dinner! So we left our dorm and climbed into the van. We were in the rain for about 10 seconds between the dorm and our van and we were soaked! It was raining so hard. We drove to the restaurant and saw cars stalled on the side of the road and the streets were so flooded there were waves and wakes from peoples cars! It was really exciting.

We all got to the restaurant in one piece and began our dinner. We were joined by some of the faculty at PKU who helped put together our fantastic program. It was a really nice time. We did many cheers and had a lot of laughs. It was nice to have a fun dinner before Dr. Burgess left. It was also nice to have a chance to thank the faculty at PKU for all their hard work putting together our program as well as Dr. Burgess! The only down side is this means our time in Beijing is running short. We'll just have to enjoy the little time we have left as best as we can!

Some of us at one of the tables at the dinner

Zai jian!