Sunday, July 13
7:20 AM

I'm legal! I finally got my Temporary Resident Registration and so now if I get stopped by the street police I'll have something to show them. So, I'm a little excited about that.

Thursday evening I saw Emily and she said she normally walks to school, but that she did have a car and could bring it up Friday afternoon when we met, if I or 'my friend' wanted to go somewhere. So I said I'd give her a call around lunchtime the next day and let her know.

Friday morning while I was biking to class my phone rang. I had it in the side pocket of my backpack so it was a bit tricky reaching back to answer it while I was pedaling, but I managed. But if you think driving and talking on a cell phone is dangerous, you should try bicycling through morning rush-hour Beijing traffic and doing the same thing. Let's just say next time I'll pull over. Anyhow, it was Ji Young asking me if I was on my way to class and saying that her stomach hurt, and that she was going to be late to class, and could I tell the teacher, etc. So when I got to class I remembered our assignment from the other day about writing an 'I can't come to class tomorrow' note in chinese. I walked in and said, 'Lv Laoshi, jintian zaoshang Ji Young gei wo da dian hua. Ta gaosu le wo ta de duzi teng, he wan lai le.' (Teacher Lv, this morning Ji Young called me. She told me her stomach hurt, and she would come later.) Apparently that worked because she smiled and said 'feichang hao!' (Very good!), I assume in reference to my speaking and not that fact that Ji Young was sick.

At lunchtime I called Ji Young to check on her and ask if she wanted to go somewhere with Emily this afternoon. She said she was supposed to meet her language tutor Sylvia from Chicago (actually from Beijing) later on but maybe it'd be fun if we all met up and did something. I called Emily back and she was OK with that. Around 3:15 Emily showed up and took us down to some large shopping area called Xidan. On the way we passed the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square. At some point I'll go back and visit them properly before I leave.

We met Sylvia and her husband, and one other guy. We went shopping for awhile and I actually bought a much smaller backpack to carry back and forth to class everyday. The big one I brought was great to hold all the stuff I didn't want to check on the plane, but it's cumbersome to carry around all day so I found a small black one on sale for about $30. Incidentally, they do sales here differently. A typical sale might have a big sign that says '8 zhe'. 'Zhe' means '10 percent'. And '8 Zhe' means '80% ON', which is the same as 20% off, see. Backwards from the way the U.S. does it. Glad we learned that before we went shopping. The whole procedure for buying things, even in department stores, is different, too. You find what you want and the clerk writes you up a ticket. You then take that ticket to a central cashier, pay, and then go back to where your item was to pick it up. They do that for everything. I don't think they want the clerks to handle the money.

We also stopped at a pharmacy, which was an interesting experience. There must have been 30 aisles in there, and each aisle had at least one employee assigned to it. So there was no shortage of help. You also have a choice between 'xi yao' (western medicine) or 'zhong yao' (chinese medicine). Most people seem to choose chinese medicine here. It's all very different. Usually involves buying vials of several things that you have to drink several times a day. But they all swear by it. In fact Ji Young has a preference for that and that's what she ended up buying. They also let you take the medicine right there in the store and they tell you what to do. It's almost like going to the doctor. Very comforting.

Afterwards all 6 of us ate at a chinese 'hot pot' restaurant where they boil oil at your table and you order a bunch of stuff to drop in it and then fish out later to eat. They divided our rectangular 'pot' into 2 sections. One for spicy, one not. It was great. It's a bit of a challenge because you forget what you've put in there and it's hard to see where the stuff is through the oil and spices and all. But it's definitely a social experience.

I've been told by a number of chinese people that my pronunciation is very clear. And when I complain that they're speaking too fast they apologize and say that I was speaking chinese fast, too, and my pronunciation was good enough that they assumed I was more fluent. Which is a huge compliment. And also a bad assumption. But Chinese people don't give fake compliments.... if they think you're bad at something they just won't say anything.

Emily dropped us off about 10 that night, and I rode back home on the bike.

Saturday morning a bunch of us met at the school for a trip to the Great Wall at about 8:30. The section we went to was about an hour-and-a-half drive out of the city. It's the first 'touristy' place I've been to since arriving, so it's the first time I've had to deal with souvenir street vendors. We found it was easy to just wave them off and say 'bu yao' (don't need), and they get the message. Although we did buy some ice cream. Anyhow, about 25 of us took cable cars up to the top of the mountain to one of the towers. The towers are numbered, and we started at tower 10. Well, I should say they're numbered on the Great Map (my term) at the bottom, but not on the towers themselves, which is hopelessly confusing. Even the guides have no idea what tower they're at at any given time.

Our guide was 'Angry Calligraphy Guy', as the guys from the UK have started to call him. Although he wasn't angry yesterday -- I guess he was more in his element. He took a number of group pictures at the top and then turned us loose. We had two choices. Hike along the wall up (and I mean UP) to tower 20, then back down to tower 6 where there was apparently a way back down. The guide said we had to be back down at the bus a 2 PM, which gave us 3 hours. Well, we walked as far as tower 11, and Ji Young and I decided there was no way we were going to make it up to 20. So we turned around and walked back towards tower 6.

Which was an arduous-enough hike as it was -- there were lots of stairs and narrow doorways. And it was very hot. My host mom had given me some 'sour plum juice' which is very popular here, and apparently good for the heat. So I had that and plenty of water. We took lots of great pictures. The Wall really is an amazing thing. And the scenery was incredible. You could see the Wall snake off into the distance for miles and you could just imagine the 200 years of slave labor it took to build it. It took us probably an hour and a half to get to tower 6. There, we had two options to get down. Another cable car-type ride (this one was open, kind of like a ski-lift), OR, a toboggan run to the bottom. Not kidding. And Ji Young wasn't about to let us avoid that, so we each paid 40 yuan plus 1 yuan for insurance (yes, insurance). And we lined up to get in these single-person toboggan-things. And of couse she says, 'you go first.' Right. You had a hand brake thing, but that was it, and they told you to lean in to the turns so you didn't crash. Anyway, it was loooong way to the bottom, but it was a blast.

When we got to the bottom we were starving so we found some place that sold noodles and we hung out there. A little later we met up with everybody else, who in fact made it to tower 20, but only had enough time left to go back to tower 10 (where we started) and take the original cable car back down. So they never made it to the toboggan run, and so in MY opinion they missed out.

The bus dropped us back at the school around 3:30, and I went in to get on the net and relax. While I was there, this chinese guy Tom who's been talking to me every day (an english student) offered to take me to dinner at 5:30. So we went to this very local chinese place and he ordered a bunch of stuff for me to try. It was a place that specialized in mutton, apparently, and the cuisine was from some other province in China, although I don't remember the name. There was spicy mutton on a stick, ribs, some spicy cabbage dish, and of course, leg of mutton. Yes, eating a chicken leg is one thing, but you haven't lived until you've been given plastic gloves and a sheep leg to eat. I tried everything and it was very good, but I couldn't eat much because the heat during the day had kind of made me lose my appetite.

I'm going to head up to the school around 1:30 and try to post this along with some pictures.