Beijing, China. What's Happening to Me: The Thirteenth Day

The air this morning was very clear, but I did not go for a run. I did not sleep well last night after my first large-ish Chinese dinner. It also did not help that it was not exactly dark in my room. I will have to take a photo to show the amount of light that streams in. I need to buy some of those shades to wear while I sleep. That would take care the problem. The sun comes up before 500 so by 500 AM, it is bright in my room. Because the curtains are not blackout curtains, it is nearly impossible to try to sleep after 500.

I got up at 630ish and talked to Madre then ate watermelon, yogurt and nuts for breakfast. It was satisfying enough. I am heading to work now. It looks like it will be a good day. I will plan to go swim this afternoon.

The work this morning was very limited (probably because of all the graduation celebrating), but it was acceptable. I started out the morning with Wendy. His accent is so hard to understand though, and then he writes it down illegibly and expects me to understand what he is talking about. It is interesting. Chungli gave a presentation about her project to Dr. Hongmei, I do not know what it is about when people speak Chinese in a presentation, but I just start to fall asleep, so I was nodding off the entire time. After that I put seals on Erlenmeyer Flasks for autoclaving and put some pipette tips in boxes for the same reason.

I then was told that I was not needed this morning. I was more than fine with that because I needed to get to the grocery store as I was running low on supplies. I bought more bananas, pineapples, pears, fruits that are good but I do not know the name of, banana chips, Jujube newtons, and PB (peanut butter) and honey. All of this was about 30 bucks - with the honey and PB making up half of the cost! I brought the stuff back to my room and then went to the yellow restaurant for lunch. I had a beef, tofu, potato, cabbage and rice dish. It was quite delicious. I have to say I had an embarrassing moment as I could not figure out how to open up the door to the place. It was a sliding door... so I looked like an absolute idiot. "Stupid American..."

I came back to the dorm, and a watermelon craving hit! So I broke into the watermelon, and after that first delightful bite, I felt like I had transported myself home. It was awesome. I then decided to get an online registration for a ukulele chords and tabs website. I found "Sultans of Swing" which I am in the process of learning now. This afternoon was productive. I worked with Yulan again and we cleaned electro-transforming tubes, then transformed some E. coli. Indeed, an interesting afternoon. I asked her why the air was so clean today, and she replied that she did not know...then again, she hardly notices the weather.

Swimming was fine, though there is something to be said about trying to swim 2000 meters straight and at a fast pace when you are sharing the lane with four Asians who barely know how to swim breaststroke. I got kicked several times and annoyed a few more. They have no lane etiquette, they did not know how to move to the side of a lane to allow someone to pass as well. Most of them swim vertically in the water so I could not tell if I was coming up on someone or not. The number of times that one of them pushed off in front of me as I was coming in was astounding. One would think that after almost being run over several times they would realize not to push off in front of me. But all ended up well and I got 4500 meters in. 600 warm up, 2000 straight free, 1000 straight free, 300 breast, 400 back, and 200 or so easy. Whew.

After swimming I went back to my room and almost immediately left to go find some place to eat. I ran into Pimpan and Jay Jay on the way out the north gate and said "howdy" to them. I told Jay Jay that I need to go with him to buy a guitar. I have decided to get cheap one while I am here. I walked around for awhile: I actually found a Dominoes Pizza and then went through some kind of back alleyways. After that I found myself passing the familiar yellow restaurant and walked the length of that area. I asked some African fellows that I recognized from the dorm whether the place was good and ended up sitting with them while they had a pint. I ate my own food and then some of their leftovers (old habits are hard to break...my friends at home always know me not to order food at a restaurant because there are inevitably leftovers - great money saver for me....if those involved are willing to share). It was enjoyable sitting with them and just listening, not really saying much but just listening. They talked about a ton of things that I had not heard of or about. The tensions between China and Japan for instance, and the occurrences within the African nations that they were from. Before long I had to pee and so one of them, Vincent, (who is actually only 2 or 3 doors down from me in the dorm) showed me where to go (so to speak). It was the bathroom that the entire block of businesses used. There were 4 "squatters" and it smelled terrible. I would never have seen it if I had not been shown to it. After that, they finished up their beers, and we walked back to the dorm and said good night.

Today has been a right fine day. I learned some concepts in the lab and some life outside the U.S. from the guys that I sat and visited with at the restaurant.