heyyyyyy macarena!!

So yesterday didn't have much stuff in it but each thing I did was very exciting (sort of)

I woke up early and putzed around a bit and then when Emily got up I asked her to take me to the hospital for my knees which was a good 40 minute- 1 hour bus ride away from Bei Wai... and this was with little-no traffic...god help me if I ever have an emergency. There was a lot of cool stuff to see along the way though, so I'll have to remember that bus route again-- I even saw something that said 'Costume Store', mom, but Chinese translations to english can be kind of inaccurate sometimes (example 'Fried Surfac' instead of noodles, or rice being simply translated as 'food')... so I don't know if it was really a costume store.

We had to go to the Emergency room section because I didn't have an appointment. I'm glad Emily was there because there was some mixup with the insurance that IES provides and she got it straitened out for me using her chinese. It was a very nice, clean hospital, comparable to hospitals in the united states and most everyone spoke english, but it was still nice to have Emily because if something was getting lost in translation she was there to help me out. They checked me out and did an ultrasound so make sure I didn't have blood clots in my legs, but pretty much just said that it was probably just inflammation and gave me more ibuprofen, telling me to take 4, 3 times a day and then some hydrocodone  for the pain (because I had told the doctor about me having to crawl up the stairs). They said if it doesn't get better by monday I'll go in to see the orthopedist...Emily and I had lunch at a XinJiang (sheen jyahng) restaurant which has this really good fried bread stuff...tasty stuff and then took the bus back to campus.

I got back around 3 and was pissed cuz I had missed the outing to KTV, which is the karaoke place and so I pretty much took a nap until 6:30 when a bunch of us had signed up to  go to an all you can eat/drink hot pot restaurant where good times ensued.

Mom and Dad, I am definitely taking you to this restaurant. It is all you can eat/drink (alcohol included) hot pot for 65 kuai (9.75 USD). I didn't know what hot pot was when I signed up, but essentially, they give you a pot of boiling hot water and then the restaurant is full of uncooked veggies, meats, seafood, and noodles (plus other cooked things to eat with your food) and then you put all your stuff in the pot to cook and then eat it! My favorite part was the make your own sauce, where they had a bunch of sauce ingredients and you mix them all together for a yummy concoction, i think mine was soy and chives or something.

In general, giving americans the opportunity to eat and drink all they can is kind of a bad idea in my opinion. We really lived up to our reputation as ugly americans. In all seriousness though, if you come to China and are not good at holding your liquor, beware of baijiu (bye-jeeyoh= white liquor). It is essentially Everclear, so like 100-120 proof alcohol. It can really mess you up so just be smart...some people sadly were not last night.

After the hot pot, some of us took cabs to SanLiTuanr (sahn-lee-twar= i don't know what it means) which is one of the pretty hopping bar districts around Beijing--don't worry I didn't drink anymore I know my limits. It brings a lot of foreign people, it seems to me that this is where all the expats and tourists go, so when all the Chinese people get back I'll have to figure out where they go. As a result, there were a lot of beggars here trying to get money from the foreigners. The beggars here are smart so they use cute little kids to  come up to people with big hearts like me to try to get money...it gets really really hard to turn them down but with so many around I would probably get swarmed if I tried to give some. There were also a few drunk Chinese people trying to practice their english..."hello", "how are you", "I'm going to kill you" simple stuff like that...We went to Shooters and some other places where they were playing pseudo-popular american tunes...including, yes, the macarena. We danced a bit and came back and were probably ripped off by the cabbie, but I guess it is karma for not giving money to the beggars...

Maybe I'm making friends? Possibly?

Leave me comments!

Picture Summary:
- Persephone and Scott having some sort of deep discussion, probably hashing out a scheme to steal some BaiJiu from the restaurant.
- Delicious Hot Pot goodies
- Me, Sean, and Persephone in the bathroom. It was Sean's host family that I stayed with on New Years.
- Like, I said all you and eat and drink is just not a good idea when americans are around.