back in business!

It seems that the Chinese government has reviewed my blog, and upon determining that it is not a threat to their Communist power base, has un-blocked. At least for the time being! So bring on the comments!

Anyways, so back to what I've been doing. I didn't go out tonight because I went out three nights in row, embarassingly enough, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tuesday night, as I wrote, we went to hotpot and got back rather late, and Wednesday and Thursday I went out to a local bar with friends, which was pretty fun. It was nice because it was half foreigners, and half Chinese, which is a nice change from places that are all foreigners. Thursday night I also went to a sushi restaurant with my friends near our school. I spent a large amount of money (Ron will hate this, but it was actually USD $6, which is paltry compared to what we spend on sushi regularly) but I got tons and it was amazingly delicious. Today I went shopping again, and bought a cute le sportsac purse. I also got another manicure, this time with a guy friend of mine. I spoke a bit to my manicurist, but I really cannot emphasize enough how difficult it is to understand people here. They mumble, or speak in dialects, or speak rapid fire...it can be quite frustrating, when I feel that I can speak to people, but cannot understand what they say in response.

My earlier paragraph leads me into two separate subjects: my feelings about my activities here and my feelings about my shopping.

First, activities here. I have been feeling a little guilty about the fact that I have not gotten deep into the city, met locals, spoken to locals, been invited into the homes of locals to dine..all the stuff that you read about in the guidebooks, or those crazy travel books you read (like a favorite of mine, the Search for China). It's all my family's fault--they set me up to experience countries through doing stuff like we did in the Philippines, staying at people's houses and really experiencing life. So here, just going to class, shopping, and taking a taxi to foreigner areas to eat dinner, I feel like a sham, like I'm not really experiencing life here. But as a friend said, we only have so much time here, and we are geographically isolated, which makes it difficult to go out. It's a bit rambling, but basically, I've been pressuring myself to have a Peace Corps-like experience, when that is not quite possible here. It's not my last time in Beijing, and I have to realize that.

That leads into my second point of trying to make myself feel better through writing it publicly. I've been shopping so much! It's like I'm fabulously wealthy here. The prices are about the same as in the US if you pretend that they are not RMB, but USD. So basically, everything is 1/8 the price in America. And that means that my weekly budget, which is about $90 US, can buy me the world here. It's goign to make me hate America when I get back, because I can buy whatever I want here, go to nice dinners...I highly recommend China as an earthly Paradise. At least for shoppers.

Tomorrow I'm off to the Military Museum again, since my friends didn't go the first time, they want to go, and I'm going to bring my camera this time. (So look for pics of Eve in a Soviet tank). I also may go to karaoke (known in China as ka la OK). Bye!