hello, again!

Sorry it's been a while-we've been traveling and I'm having a bit of computer problems. It seems that my blog has been blocked by China or something, because I definitely can't load it. So instead of leaving me comments, like some nice people have, send me an email. Thanks! SO we're finally in Beijing. We had a nice few days in Shanghai, including one day trip to Suzhou to buy fabric with mom and then yesterday we took the overnight train to Beijing and arrived this morning at 7 am. Instead of boring you with the details, I'll just go over some random observations of mine.
First of all, traffic here is insane. The basic rule governing the road is the same as the rule of chicken--whoever swerves last loses, which is really great when you're in a taxi, and one second you almost hit a bicyclist, and the next second you are almost run down by a bus. I don't know why they even bother to have lanes!
Another funny note. A few nights ago, we were walking in Shanghai and mom let out a loud noise (a whoop for those who know her). We saw a young guy darting away from us and thought she had been startled by his approach. It actually turned out that she had thought he was going to smack Felice, and had yelled at him! We had a good laugh, as did his friends!
I have also started to use my Chinese. We've found that without my chinese, we would not have been able to get into some places or find out some important information, but sometimes I am not understood at all, despite my best attempts. Nonetheless, it's nice to finally realize that Chinese is not a language used solely by sadistic teachers to torture poor students at Georgetown U, but is instead actually used by a large amount of people. I'm getting a lot more confident about using it, and am actually looking forward to improvign it. I'm looking forward to startign school in general, as I'm really interested to meet the other American students and get settled in.
Sometimes I'm really excited to be here, and other times I'm a little down about the smog and grittiness of the cities, and the total disrespect/indifference/rudeness of the people towards us. SOme have been nice, but others have laughed, delighted in screwing us, and have made no effort to help us. Good luck, Beijing, with getting a good rap from people visiting for the Olympics.
Today we saw the Ming Tombs, and took 7 different vehicles to get there and back. Tomorrow we'll go to the Great Wall. I'll keep you all posted and write more when I can. I'm totally exhausted at the moment.