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

Sunday. I got up this morning at 820, wrote some on my "thesis" and got ready to go to church. I had told Vincent to knock, but I either missed it or he forgot, so I ended up sitting here until about 1100. It was okay though. At 1140 I left for the pool after talking to Madre. I knocked on Silvio's door, but he was not in, I think. I have not seen him in a few days.

I walked to the pool. It may be the last time I swim here. I felt so bad in the water. I think that it was the air today coupled with the air of all the past days that have just killed me. I eked out 3000 meter, and if I ever hear anyone complaining about lane etiquette ever again, I may punch them. The Chinese people have a total disregard for any lane etiquette. They swim like they drive - no regards to lanes and badly. They make frequent stops in the middle of the pool, swim perpendicular to the lanes at a depth of 6 inches so you hit them when you swim, swim in the middle of the lane, and swim vertically so that you don't realized there is someone swimming there until you hit their back. I have been kicked by so many people doing bad breaststroke here. It is especially bad when they swim down the middle. And for their breaststroke pull they basically do an underwater pull out on the surface which leads to them grabbing you as you pass them. Very annoying.

After swimming, I headed to the Sesh Wan place and had fried rice. I then realized that instead of giving the shower card to the person at the desk at the pool I had given them my room key... This was annoying... I now have to get a new one made. At the pool they give you a card that allows you to shower. This card is the exact shape and size of the room key, and so I accidentally gave the attendant my room key. When I tried to get into my room it did not work. On the plus side I now have a souvenir from the pool.

In order to open my door to my room, I retrieve the master card from the front desk, open my door, run down and give the master card back to the front desk, then run back up. To get the guy at the desk to understand what I needed, I asked someone sitting in the restaurant to help me.

At 220 I left to go to the Weigongcun subway and waited for Faith. She showed up on time, and we went to the palace museum. It was very large and very beautiful. There were tons of lotus flowers and the ruins of that remained after the Anglo-Allied forces burned it down. Faith said that it was a good thing that I did not come here with Wendy. Faith used the word "rammy" today; it was awesome. She used it to describe the times that she and her friends had rammed boats into each other. Not quite the correct interpretation of the word, but still flattering that she has incorporated it into her lexicon. There was a huge watermelon statue in the exit of the summer palace; looks good don't it? (see photo at the very bottom). They also had a model of the entire area - a very large to scale model of it in a very large room.

It was very, very humid today - it was only about 85 degrees but with the humidity, it made for a sweaty day.

After going through that area we came back to Weigongsun and ate at the Sesh Wan place where we ran into Yulan and her boyfriend. They came in as we were finishing. It was a pretty good day overall. I played a lot of guitar and stuff and wrote some on my paper; 3300 words are written and I have not even started on the easy part of the actual "paper" paper, I am just doing my story part now.

Just FYI - The AQI just dropped below 150 for the first time in over a week.

Good night and God bless.

Pictures !!!

Pavilion in the palace