beijing okay

Everyone:

It's around 5:30am here, and I'm sitting in the small internet room in our hostel with four or five very drunk Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch, etc. types chain smoking and slurring loudly next to me. Everyone else is sleeping.

I'm starting to feel less exhausted, and yesterday, our first full day, was incredibly long even though we ended up going to sleep before 8. We went to Behai park, ate fried lamb at a Chinese Muslim resturant, Saul had a really good corn popscicle, had a driver who got completely lost five or six times, drank many a Qingdao, walked aimlessly through the hutong... Since New Year is coming up, a lot of people were making fish dishes outside their homes, with one guy bashing a fishes' head in with his fist while some other guy laughed since the fish kept slipping away.

We're all a bit restless, so later today we're going to see this apartment in Haidian, which is the university district. Also, we are going to see Wudaokou, which is a neighborhood in Haidian that is supposedly pleasant and cheap and has a small foreigner community, and see if this area might be good for us. Silvia might be talking to a school tommorrow, but I'm most likely waiting a few days until Spring Festival is over.

Pictures will be posted soon! Check back!