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.