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Hey, everyone! Sorry it's been so long, but I've wanted this next update to be a visual one of sorts, and I finally got my camera and computer to work together, so.

Anyways, this is pretty much me taking pictures of some of the more oddball sights in the northwestern part of Beijing. I hope to get some pictures of the shops/stuff as well, but... it's a bit rude to take photos with people in them here, unless you know them. Nothing major, sometimes unavoidable (especially in tourist spots like the Summer Palace and Tiananmen Square), but it's awkward most of the time.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture074.jpg

This sight was just confusing. It wasn't a park, it didn't seem like it was near anything really relevant, it was just there. This was on the way back home from the Summer Palace on a different trip, idly.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture075.jpg

Meanwhile, I just enjoyed the skyline on this one.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture086.jpg

Spotted around the northern side of Beijing. I saw this while eating a small pastry and almost choked. The Chinese translates better to "Do not stop and sell things here." I have -no- clue where they got the goose part from.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture078.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture080.jpg

East of Beijing Language and Culture University there's a huge construction site. These were the two best shots I got of the cranes working there - there weren't any good spots to try and get a shot of the construction, sadly, but it looked decently interesting from what I could see.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture082.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture083.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture085.jpg

Three shots of a rather large building on the northeast edge of town. The place has a bank, a preschool, what kinda looks like an elementary school, a gym... and it's supposed to be a business. I think. The place is huge, and the only thing I was really able to tell is that it seems like it was a structure for the Olympics.

The next shots are buildings on the main road north out of Beijing.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture087.jpg

See these blue... fences, effectively? They're everywhere. They're... commonplace. They're used anywhere and everywhere there might be danger, plus some cases where it's just amusingly inconvenient. But here, I was walking through a rather run-down area, and the horizon had these kinda cool buildings blocked off by the blue fences and the wires; there were construction machines behind the fence that I didn't catch, that were just digging down quite deep to lay the foundations. It was intimidating.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture089.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture088.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture091.jpg

All of these were near the end of the day, so the light was bouncing off everything. Especially liked this building, but taking a photo of how it looked head-on was impossible due to construction where I'd need to stand.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture090.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture092.jpg

This, on the other hand... I have no clue on. It was simply eye-catching. I'd guess, based on where it is, that it is either one of the Olympic offices or it's a large corporation of some sort.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture097.jpg

And behind it was this building.

It was bizarrely enough placed (large, urban-like building on one side, small ramshackle apartment complex on the other, that I felt it worth noticing.

To the southeast was this:

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture100.jpg

Again, not a clue what it was, construction was really heavy on this road so I couldn't go any further, but that excavator there? It was about next to the building, for a size reference.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture100.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture102.jpg

A shot of a larger east-west road in Beijing, as reference, looking west toward the mountains.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture105.jpg

Remember the comment I made when talking about the Chinese New Year and the bad pun about luck returning? Yeah. Here's the visual representation: fu （福）, upside down.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture108.jpg

The lobby of the dorm I'm staying in. For reference? This is the only one like it on campus, and it's where 95% of the foreign students are placed.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture109.jpg

Observant onlookers might note that the character the left boy ha is "fu", again. The right side's character is 财 Cai, which can roughly translate to riches or fortune.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture112.jpg

The outside of the dorm. Upside-down "fu", and one of the traditional lanterns.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture115.jpg

Finally, a picture of a Chinese good-luck charm and the character "fu". Yes, that really is prevalent this time of year.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1010.jpg

Front of the dormitory during the day, a bit earlier in the year.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1012.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1014.jpg

Same building, back and front. This is where most of my classes are.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1002.jpg

And this is the room when my first roommate was here. Aside from the laptop, the water bottle and the backpack on the floor? The entire mess is actually his. Yes, Dad, I'm actually decently-well organized here, compared to my usual. We'll see if this keeps up when I return!

A few words:

lai (来) (lie) come (toward the speaker)

qu (去) (cshoo) go (away from speaker)

jin (进) (gin) move inside (used with lai or qu; jinlai is come in, jinqu is go in)

chu (出) (choo) Yes, that's all the difference between chu and qu. It's confusing. move outside (used in the same way as jin).

Howdy all! Sorry this update and the next one will be so slow in coming, but here in China it's almost time for my final exams of the semester; they start this Tuesday. So there's a lot of studying, a lot of bookwork, and less time to get writing like this done, no matter if I want to do it or not. Still, there's no reason I can't get an entry in between now and then, so...

I got a bit sick with what felt like a mild sinus infection late December, so I ended up going to Beijing Language and Culture University's "yiyuan" (医院), or hospital, to get some medication. I chose to try some Chinese medicine (after clearing the medications with my teacher to make sure they were all both real and not harmful), and I'm still taking some of them. Let me establish one thing right now: Chinese medicine tastes really really bad. Worse than any Western medicine I've ever had. It's... They have three forms at the clinic I went to: pills (mainly vitamins), powders to mix into hot water like a sort of tea, and little doses of liquid. The pills are okay, the powders aren't bad. The liquids are simply noxious. Fortunately, they helped a lot - I've been doing well ever since.

It's interesting; I had expected the weather in Beijing to closely resemble Michigan, but that really hasn't been the case. We've seen less than an inch of snowfall here, and the weather has been consistently in the range of a pleasant fall. It was surprising especially since it got this cold far quicker here (around October), but it hasn't gotten any worse. Still, walking around in just my hoodie, jeans and sandals with socks is fine by me.

Finally figured out how to work the laundry machines here correctly - far more maintenance than is intuitively obvious from the design, as they shunt the hot air straight through the lint catcher. And no one here ever bothers to clean it. Still, knowing how to work it is half the struggle, in and of itself.

For those of you who are intrepid travelers, a few words in case you fall ill in China:

sheng bing (shung bee-ng) 生病 - sick, ill, fall ill

fa shao (fah shaow) 发烧 - fever

ganmao (gahnmao) 感冒 - cold

tou teng (tow tung) 头疼 - headache

duzi (dewzee) 肚子 - stomach ( 肚子疼 is stomach pain).