okay, an update

I'm going to sit down and write this for at least ten minutes! I just got back from a group trip to the Forbidden City, which as you know, I was at just last Monday. I decided to go anyways, particularly because everyone was going, and we had a guide this time. The Forbidden City is where the emperors of the Qing and Ming Dynasty lived, and is a particularly terrible place to visit in the summer, as it is basically composed of a series of gates and larger buildings containing thrones/beds/etc which are divided by huge concrete squares. When visiting on Monday, my sister and I were wondering why there are no trees in the complex, since the concrete creates a hot wasteland, and I got my answer today. First of all, the emperor wanted to live in the tallest structure in the palace, and was concerned about the possibility of a tree growing higher than his living building. Second, assassins could hide among the trees. Finally, the character for tree, shu, placed in a square box, is the character for trouble, so it was bad luck to have trees. That's your interesting random fact for the day.
In other more specific news, it turned out that I tested into the highest level class, which is good and bad. It's good because I have to pass my fluency test in the fall to graduate, so I darn well should be in the highest class. However, it's bad because I have a lot of trouble understanding what the teacher says. It's especially trouble when other students make a joke, everyone laughs, and I have to laugh along just so I dont' seem like the class idiot. I have two teachers, one for oral and one for written, and I'm in class for four 50-minute sessions a day, 8 am-12. After class today, I went with friends to one of the one campus cafeterias, which specializes in dumplings, or jiaozi. Unfortunately, I was misunderstood at teh counter and got vegetarian dumplings, but a second trip landed me what a friend described as "pork gushers", gushers being the candy with juice in the middle, for those who don't know. I'm planning on a strict diet of jasmine tea and dumplings, alternating between pork and beef. Actually, I've also been to another cafeteria on campus that has lots of little dishes that you just pick up and put on your tray, and my favorite dishes there so far have been the fried rice and some really great green beans. Also regarding food, I went to a Korean barbecue with friends last night, which was a lot of fun. The food was super spicy but good, and we sat on chairs that rose only about 3 inches from the floor. Unfortunatley, when we divided up the bill between the fifteen of us, we had to each pay the huge amount of 40 RMB. Yeah, that's $5 US. Today at lunch, I paid a total of $2 for about 12 dumplings and a bottle of pepsi.
So, Jen, that's the food rundown for you! Actually, I've been meaning to talk about it anyways. I have gotten only mildly sick once, and that was from a salami sandwich at a hotel, so I've been really lucky. The key is to ease into the food slowly, get some Chinese bacteria in the stomach, and then go for the meat on the stick street vendors!
I'm going to relax tonight, but tomorrow night I'll go out to some bar probably, like I did with friends two nights ago (where we listened to a nightclub singer do the Backstreet Boys better than they can) and hang out. We also have a field trip to a temple for Saturday and I'm going cell phone shopping with a couple girls on Sunday. Everyone in the program is really nice, and about 6/25 of the kids are from Georgetown, so that's cool. I'm actually rooming with a Georgetown student (Cynthia Chau, for those who know her) and we're in the same class. Okay, it's been more that ten minutes, and I have to go eat dinner with my Chinese tutor (we all get assigned one to meet with about 2x/week, mine's a graduate of Beijing U). Hope everyone's having a good summer!