The summer I was 19 and in Beijing.

Ahh this has been a truly amazing summer- one filled with a lot of personal growth. I've had some of my best friends here with me. Sometimes it seems as if everyone I know has transplanted to this city for the summer. I can't walk through Sanlitur without running into a Yalie. I just finished my Eggplant, mifan and Meng bean porridge at the Joo Fanguanr (this has become my favorite meal, I eat it once a day). I love sitting by myself (since I go alone they sit me at a table with another party). I love watching the families interact, one time a little girl insisted on sitting next to me and educating me on Chinese cuisine. I'm in a teahouse now sipping loose-leaf green tea. I'm going to miss the tea but I've been told bringing tea back home might not be the brightest idea in case they mistake it for something else.. :) I remember when I first arrived in Beijing I thought the teacups looked like aquariums with all the free-swimming greenery. Yesterday after Zhongwen zhouzi we (Dahlia, Jenny, Morgan and I) headed to huangqiao to haggle for some pearls and fake designer purses (again, how many times have we done this now??) We have a "friend" at one of the stalls who seriously gives us the lowest price she can since we've bought so much from her. They're real leather and the best quality copies I've found in China. The pearls are real but of course cultured. The method for testing the authenticity is using a knife (or your teeth if no knife is available) to scrape each pearl and see if it gives off a white dust- if it's a real pearl the scratch shouldn't be noticeable. Then you rub two pearls together to make sure they produce the dust. You have to do this to each pearl. Even the "black" pearls give off a white dust. I'm also a new convert to tailored clothes!! I had a very Ralph Lauren-esque black dress made especially for me at Yashow. They have pictures there fitting suits for Condoleezza Rice and Laura Bush! I haven't decided yet whether I want to spring for a suit but they sure do a great job! And even if it's $100 because this is a nice shop, how much would a professionally tailored suit set you back in New York? After our bargaining extravaganza we headed back to the sushe for the DSIC "talent show".. so funny. We had to learn how to sing this Chinese song about "lonely boys and girls" and "tanlianai" ....there were even hand motions. Enough said. After grabbing some food from the stick man (skewers of everything you can imagine) outside the school gate we went out to Houhai, chilled for a while and looked at the pretty lake. Then we headed back to our real spiritual home, Sanlitur, for some real fun. Of course, we ran into a bunch of Yailes and went to this French/Vietnamese place called Muse and my resident Vietnamese friend, Jenny, advised me on ordering some amazing bean pudding/porridge thing and coconut jelly. YUM. We of course ran into more Yalies at Bar Blue and showed those Chinese boys how to break it down. I wasn't able to stay up for the Tiananmen flag raising at four. Knowing my limits, I headed back to the sushe--curled up in the back of the cab with my roasted corn on the cob--content. And now it's time to work.

Insight of the day--
Dahlia: Maybe the first pirates were Asian? We thought they were just saying "ARRRR" and really they were speaking Putonghua!