Her lips are devil red and her skin's the color mocha

buAlright, starting to catch up.

So we had an all-group day at the temple of heaven and Tiananmen square, where basically everyone from the international PKU summer program went. This means there were people from Japan, the UK, Canada, California, South Carolina, etc. etc.. Pretty fun stuff. I made some new friends there. Hashtag Kei and Helen. I could spend a long time trying to explain every detail, but I think I'll just show you instead. Get ready for an onslaught of pictures.

The area before the actual temples is a really popular place for adults to get together to do hobbies. There were a bunch playing hacky-sack, some dancing to traditional music, and some, like here, practicing calligraphy.

The older trees always have these labels on them. Green means they're over 100 years old,  but less than 300. Trees with red tags are over 300 years old. There's quite a few of them in any historical park.

After this my camera ran out of battery. :( Luckily, there's still the iphone! Yay for an abundance of redundant technology!

Oh, by the way, I had this picture on my phone I wanted to share with you guys. It has nothing to do with this, but...

Look at this. Just look at this. Tell me that isn't the biggest zucchini you've ever seen. And people thought ours were big. Apparently this is what they use to cook with in the family owned take-out place in the dorm area. O.o Where do you even get zucchini that big?

Anyway, a little distraction there....

Bam! Mao Zedong. Yep. You got it. Tiananmen Square.

In case you can't tell, it was really hot that day. Really really hot. All the picture might look a bit cloudy, but they lie. And this whole area is basically a gargantuan mass of concrete. Not goot for heat absorption. Very good for the hundreds of vendors offering ice water bottles and "popsicles" (basically ice with a little bit of flavoring, that they've been carrying around in a box.)

Tiananmen is basically the center of politics in China, and has been since Beijing became the capital. Although Tiananmen Square is all about the communist party and Mao Zedong, the inside actually belongs to the imperial palace and living quarters. And they must have needed a lot of space, because I can tell you, this place is huge. I mean, it goes on forever. You basically enter a building+courtyard combination, marvel in awe, then move on to the next one behind it. For a very. long. time. It definitely goes on forever. At the very end, there's a garden that is basically one of the only areas where the imperial concubines were allowed to go. Them and the eunuchs got the whole back area of the complex to themselves. Whoo hoo.

It was really nice to get into this area, where the grass actually broke up the concrete. The heat finally relaxed a little.

This is the garden in the back.

Alright, I should have stopped writing a long time ago. I'll tell you guys about the "big family buffet" later. But before I go, I have an interesting anecdote to share. I just bought my first cup of instant mocha! Whooo! How interesting! So I gave it a go tonight, and actually recorded it for your viewing pleasure. It's actually pretty boring though, so don't watch it unless you're pretty dang bored. Which I actually suspect some of you are. Not that I'm pointing anyone out.

*cough*Vivian*cough*getalife*coughcough*

Wow, you know, this Beijing air is really getting to my throat.

So I actually also bought an instant latte too, but I won't be trying that until later. Meaning probably tomorrow morning. I swear, if the packaging used in these things wasn't so incredibly ridiculously unsustainable, I'd have an entire cupboard filled with these things, and I'd become completely addicted to these things. Guess it's finally a good thing I'm a stuck-up environmentalist, huh?

Well, it looks like the video is having problems. Oh well, I'll get it up there eventually.

So the Mocha video simply didn't work out. Dunno, apparently blogger is protesting my blatant consumerism. So anyway, I put up a random other video. Hope you guys like martial arts.

Oh, and I have a ton of other things to talk about too, shopping in South Chaoyang and the Summer Palace could definitely take up a post on their own. Well, we'll see how things go. I might end up updating everything in the airport at this rate. :P It'd give me something to do. If I have time, of course. There was a small bombing incident at that airport a week ago or so, so security's going to be pretty tight. Might take me awhile to get through. :/ Welp, what will be will be! So philosophical.

The great great great big wall (with a great lot of stairs.)

Alright, time to write a new blog. Lets see, what was the last thing I wrote about...

...

Wow, that was a long time ago. (^_^;)

annnnnyway....

We had the graduation party for Dong laoshi. She was very happy and surprised. We spent a long time putting it together, and spent about 30 minutes at the bakery trying to work out with the people there what to write on the cake. (graduations aren't really a big thing here, so no one sells anything related to it really.) Apparently congratulations was too big to write, and we didn't know how to write it in chinese, and then we asked for "congrats," but apparently it was still too long, but then we pointed to another cake that had "happy birthday" written on a piece of chocolate as a decoration, and they said, oh, if we use that decoration instead of the one we usually use, it'll be fine. Then we finally got the cakes, and they both said 生日快乐。(¬_¬) Geeze people.

We've been going out to eat a lot, and we've seen some really interesting places. Most places have a decent amount of pictures on their menues, and quite a few even have english translations. Although we've run into a few questionable translations, and a lot of spelling errors. Hey, their english is obviously better than my chinese.

awesome desert they had at this one restaurant. Apparently bread is a really big desert here? But it's basically a big block of toast with ice cream and cream. As the ice cream soaks into the bread, deliciousness is made. ^-^

Then, of course, we had the Great Wall. The Great Wall of China is actually a collection of fragments of wall (which didn't really help keep invaders out, as they would just have to go around. But it makes for a beautiful view.

There are enough souvenir stores here to constitute a decent sized village.

Stairs to go up to the wall.

Hashtag Golnessa.

So many stairs.....

Later that night we went out for Korean barbecue. Beijing is kinda like Southern California in it's range of food choices. Although the majority is Chinese food, there are options for everything from Korean to Japanese to Arabic to American fast food chains.

The day after (geeze, we're so busy) we went to the Temple of Heaven, where the emperors used to go to pray to their "father" the god heaven (verses the god of earth) once or twice a year to pray for good harvest and to "reconnect." After that we also went to Tiananmen Square, the center of politics for all of China. I'll have to get to that some other time though. Busy busy busy busy. Later then!

请坚稳附好

你好！最近怎么样？我还可以。

Subway is definitely my favorite way to travel. It is simple, fast, easy to plan ahead for, has detailed directions, and requires no talking to anyone. Beijing has a subway system that will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go, for about 35 cents a ride. It's really convenient, and everything is written in both simplified characters and English. Even the announcements are in english as well, in this funky british accent. "Please stand firm, hold the hand rail."

I haven't been updating much lately because of two very important reasons.

One, I've been super busy, because classes have started and suddenly I have responsibilities. Weird.

Two, there really isn't as much to say, as I'm not going on fantastic adventures every day anymore. Of course there are a lot of interesting things that happen, but unless you want me to describe every time I fail with chopsticks at the canteen (too many times) or manage to refill my phone card by myself (with the very nice lady at the news stand doing most of the steps for me,) I think I'll keep it to the basics. (You don't want to hear about all my failures, right? ... we don't have time for that. -.-, )

So. The beer factory. Last Thursday we went to the Yanjing beer company, which I might have told you is pretty much THE beer around here. It's the first fully Chinese brand to break through the Western monopoly. There was a really long intro video (basically a 20 minute commercial) and a comparatively short tour. There were a few interesting points though.

Apparently fake cacti are a thing here.

This is a model of the whole factory grounds. These guys are huge.

And that's pretty much it for that tour. We went back to the dorms and spent the rest of the day hanging out and studying for the exam the next day. 考试太难了。:P

There's a really cute cafe in the dorm complex. It's a great place to study and hang out.

Early the next day (right before our test, which made more than a few people a little testy. Haha, testy, get it?) We went on our last tour, to the CocaCola factory.

The exam came and went, and I was able to have a free weekend after it was over, with school not starting until Monday. I used the time to do some shopping and hang out with a few friends. 我们一起玩儿了很高兴。:D

Jenny's lovely face. The dumplings had soup inside! Soup! That's so weird!

I really wanted to show Vanda this shop. Hashtag Vanda.

Classes have been really very interesting so far. I'm taking a chinese language class, as well as a class called Economics, the Environment and China, and Issues Concerning China's Rise. They're both very interesting with very good professors, and I am looking forward to what I have to learn here. I feel like I've already learned to much, but I still have a long way to go. It's amazing how little we know about the country we talk about so often in the news and in classrooms.

Although classes take up a good amount of my time, I still find a moment here or there to have a bit of fun. Going out to eat is common, as it's cheap and there are plenty of options nearby. Beijing also has a proliferation of malls. Everywhere. Seriously. Like, three on the same corner.

Mochi! This was tiramisu flavor. They have some pretty fancy desert places around here.

Ordering hotpot.

If you order noodles, this guy comes out to prepare them for you. He does a bunch of cool tricks to stretch out the  dough. He's very well practiced, and hasn't hit anything that I saw, though he gets within a few centimeters.

This mall had about 3 different arcades in it for kids to wait in while their parents shop. They were really more like mini amusement parks. I suppose this is what happens when you get extreme competition between neighboring malls.

Desert!

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to Kid's Republic, which I've actually never heard of before, but apparently it's this international children's book store that is designed as a sort of kids playground, but meant specifically for reading. The internet has some really cool pictures.

We're having a party for our assistant Dong laoshi (董老师）tomorrow, to celebrate her graduation. She's a really sweet and awesome person, so we're trying to make it really nice. Apparently they don't really celebrate graduation at all here in China (her parents aren't even coming for the ceremony.) I find that pretty strange, especially in a country so strongly focused on education. Interesting, huh? You learn something new every day. I know I am.

I think there are plans to go to the Great Wall this coming weekend, we'll see how that goes. And I'm hoping to do some more sightseeing soon. Hopefully I can get around to the Summer Palace on Monday (my schedule gives me a three day weekend.) I can't believe I'm halfway through the third week already. I feel like I only arrived a few days ago. Time flys by so fast, I look up and suddenly realize that there's so much I haven't done. It's hard to think of how soon I'm going to have to say goodbye to all of the great people I've met, and how little time I have to do all that I have planned. My time here is already almost halfway over, and I'm sure the rest of the time will go just as quickly. But in the meantime there's still plenty left to see. I don't think I can afford any dull moments. This program certainly keeps you on your toes. Luckily Beijing is one of the easiest cities to get around that I've been in, and there are new experiences around every corner. Lucky too, that I've met some really great and interesting people to share it with. And, of course, with all of you! Stay tuned! There's still plenty more to come!

再见！