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).