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So sorry I haven't updated for like 2 days (Jeez, Maggie you update what....like once a week? C'mon now. Maybe you should come online if you're so interested in my life :-P).This is late because I couldn't get my pictures to upload until today when Scott, who is apparently a magical computer whiz kid got it to work. Also, the lens on my camera cracked so the pictures have weird lighting effects on them.

The day before yesterday (Saturday) I had planned on going to TianAnMen but instead decided to go to the Summer Palace because I figured that getting to Tiananmen via public transportation would be pretty easy compared to the Summer Palace.

I'm not gonna lie, it was kinda boring, and kind of cold. The buildings were nice too look at, but I think I seriously saw like 10 rooms where the tour guide said the emperor  liked to watch the nature and drink tea... seriously man how many spots does the emperor need to do this? Plus it was freezing cold... I took some pretty pictures but after a couple of hours I was ready to go.

We came back to the dorm where I was mad exhausted and decided to take a nap...sleeping through dinner (oopsies). When I woke up people told me we were going to go to WangFuJin, which is this shopping district nearish the Forbidden City. We had been told stories of a night market, so I had thought maybe I could find something to eat there.

REALLY BAD CHOICE!!! This night market, although it had food, was definitely NOT the food I wanted to be eating. Essentially, this market was filled with many kinds of 'Chuanr' (Chwar=kabobs) But these Chuanr were not your regular run-of-the-mill chuanr these chuanr were really really weird...scorpion, lizard, deer, and I think it was some sort of pupa on a stick...ew! Plus everything was being served in the open air without the use of gloves...so not too sanitary. Ergo, I wasn't really feelin' it. Took some neat pictures and hailed a cab back to the dorms.

The next day I slept in lateish, and tried to do homework but then ended up going out to lunch and then ice skating at HouHai(hoe-hi=back sea, its like a little area in Beijing with a little lake/river dealie and has a lot of bars and stuff. Stupid me  I forgot my socks but luckily they had nifty ice BIKES! These were like a cross between a bike, ice skates, and a sled, where you pedaled across the ice...so fun! They even had little stands on the ice that were selling fruit and chuanr so you could ice skate and eat...although carrying a pointy stick while you're skating is probably not the smartest idea. So we did that for awhile and then got Starbucks where I got a Vanilla Latte for 33 kuai, tai gui!!! (tie gway=too expensive)

We came back to get our books for our courses and have official kick off dinner of our language pledge. I was literally so nervous about the pledge and about the upcoming school day that I could not eat. They assigned us to our teams: I'm on team Oceania, which is the green team...they taught us how to say Oceania but it is probably the hardest one to say so I definitely forgot how. I came back and studied my butt off until about 1:00 when I hit the hay...