Apologies, again, for the long timespan between updates. Hopefully I can make it up to you all with this one.

First, as a note, China's well aware of what's been happening in France and Germany, of the protests there; China itself has been restless over it, both in support of that cause and against it. However, one major thing should be noted here - there's been very little problems toward foreigners as a result. In fact, it's almost been friendlier since then.

The reasoning's pretty simple: most Chinese are willing to accept that if you've come over here - for tourism, study, or business - you can't be that bad of a person. For them, it's the people who haven't seen and don't want to see what's going on in China, how it's changing and developing to meet up with the rest of the developed nations, that they aren't fond of, and even they aren't bad. But those who've been directly involved in the protests make them bitter.

They see the Olympics as a chance at proving this, really. They want to show that, while China may have its problems, they're quickly able to adapt to meet the needs of the people. Frankly, that's true, from what I can tell. It's not a universal trait, but most of them seem willing to work with what they have.

Speaking of change... There's been a lot going on around here, construction-wise. The street's been overcrowded due to them digging out ground for a new subway line, which will hopefully alleviate a lot of the traffic along what is one of this area's busier roads. In addition, the line will directly service a fair bit of the Olympic area.

And in our dormitory, I learned the reason for the bad internet access the past three weeks; apparently they've been working for a while on the wiring and electricity in order to set up a cafe and a restaraunt in the dormitory's spare rooms. I suspect they guess it'll be profitable; the cafe seems to be doing okay, the restaraunt, no one seems to be going to yet. I myself haven't tried it, but plan to with a friend tomorrow. Part of it is that, well, eating out - or even just eating - in China tends to be more communal than back in the States, so it feels more awkward going alone. That, and since right now is a mini-vacation on campus, no one's really around to go there.

The only downside of the past few days has been the weather; hot, smoggy, and generally unpleasant, but still not terrible, all things considered. I'm preparing for when Dad arrives, myself; he has some vacation time, so he decided he'd come out to visit. Trying to plan and find things around Beijing for us to do. Even riding the subway line 13 for the time it's above-ground could make up a bit of a day.

Going to end this update here; a lot of text. Next time I get an update out will likely be with pictures around Beijing as Dad and I tour around!

-Tom

Hello everyone!

Ack, I know I said I'd get these out more often, but then China keeps me distracted for days on end. The weather here's been pretty bad; they've had thick pollution and sand storms from the Gobi on the same day, more often than not, and it's better to not go outside often, if at all, on days like that.

It's oddly not as common here as it is in other cities in China (Haerbin had a lot, notably) to see masks over the mouth to filter out dust and smog. I'm not really sure why they aren't as common here, though. If you're wondering what they look like, most are usually just white covers over the nose and face, though some are decorated fairly wildly.

Everything's been fairly peaceful in Beijing, so no worries there. On the clearer days I can see to the Summer Palace from my dorm room, I think - the largest building I showed, with the huge courtyard, is the building I refer to. Can't currently access Photobucket to show the one I'm talking about, irritably, but it should be in the pics there somewhere. At night, past a small courtyard outside the dormitory, there's a constant glow from the Wudaokou subway station and intersection, even bizarrely late at night. Seems like it's always busy; makes me wonder what the areas around downtown are like this late, but no real way to go see since the subway closes around 11:00 PM.

Really, most of my time has been spent trying to get internet to work more consistently here, and studying like crazy. My grammar class is fairly difficut, as is my reading class; listening class is going too slowly for my tastes. The main interest for me has been the science listening class - finally learning how to actually use numbers for more than just counting in Chinese (up until now, I could only say "add" - 加，jia) is rather nice, and since it's covering mainly vocabulary we wouldn't normally learn in our main classes anyway, it feels like it's what's helping me improve the most, despite being only once a week (Tuesday afternoons).

Not much else to say here. Rained today, first day it's actually rained all day; was nice to hear the rain against a window again for once. I'll try to get a bigger update out later this week, but with China's internet as it is right now and myself rather busy, I'm not promising much right now.

Apologies this update, too, comes late; I had to move rooms due to not having hot water, and acquired a new roommate from Japan the same day. The end result is that I misplaced my connector cord from my laptop to my camera for a few days.

And, well, I went to Harbin. It's a colder city to the northeast of Beijing, and a big metropolis in its own right. In addition, it's incredibly famous for...

Ice sculptures. Harbin (or as the Chinese call it, Haerbin) has an ice sculpture festival every year. It's really incredibly impressive. This update will be very image-heavy; my apologies for this, but it's really the sanest method to do this all.

Bats!

A fish. This picture wasn't too clear, but the crowds were thick and it was cold (-10 to -15 degrees Celsius?), so...

Celebrating the Chinese New Year - Year of the Rat, we had this statue present. This is how it's commonly depicted - more of a Jerry-like mouse than anything else.

Praying mantis.

These divided the sections of the display. I actually don't think I ever saw what was behind this one, oddly... there were some that blocked off pay-to-see sections, so I didn't go those ways.

Faces and masks! I loved how intricate these were; simply awesome to see, especially with the light.

More abstract sculptures. Some of them are pretty cool, some which I avoided weren't as interesting.

And some animalistic ones.

And then there was the octopus grabbing random things. I found, and still find, this one undefinably hilarious to see. I believe the subtext was related to Atlantis.

Finally, humanistic statues. Please note that I only got about half, primarily the ones I considered deeply impressive.

A slight side note before I continue; Harbin is about the same temperature during the winter as Kalamazoo, Michigan, but is often far less windy. So while the temperature often dives down to -10 degrees Celsius, you can, since there usually isn't much wind, get away without hat/gloves that would be essential in Kalamazoo. Of course, if you come during a snowstorm or towards the spring end of their winter (when the northeastern winds begin to pick up), you really want the gloves and hat. I wore them all the time, anyway; Beijing's gotten me used to nice spring-like temperatures.

Little igloos!

Bigger igloos! About 50 people were in this at one point; I had to wait until most of them came out before I could go in and get a good picture.

And, for you winter enthusiasts...

They had slides carved out of ice. Two sets, in fact; the first two pictures were this really windy road that looked somewhat dangerous due to all the bends, and the second one was the traditional sledding type hill.

To wrap this up, I'm just going to let some of the buildings speak for themselves here. Yes, full buildings and ships made out of ice.

Sorry for so many pictures, but seeing all this was just... awesome. Next time will probably be pictures I took around Harbin itself, though on my main walk I didn't have batteries for my camera, irritably. There will also be some more talk on the Chinese New Year, which is supposed to be over but which I'm still hearing fireworks from five days after the fact.