I showered today!!! That was my big achievement. Hadn't done it since I got on an airplane Thursday. I was trying to relive those space camp dreams. All the people on my floor stopped by to say thanks. Oh, I also managed to wake up in time to grab breakfast, a notable improvement over yesterday. I tell you things are getting more like home by the minute.

Posting pictures does not seem to work from the hotel so I am going to try from work tomorrow and see if I can get some of the pics up.

In all seriousness today was actually a lot better. I managed to leave the hotel room and everything. Got up and wandered around the city for a couple hours. I realized something about myself as well, I hate looking like a tourist when I am traveling. That is one of the main reasons that I don't take a lot of pictures on vacation. In addition I realized that no matter what I do I am going to look like a tourist here. Something about being six and a half feet tall and white. After realizing that I ended up taking pictures of everything. Like I said earlier I will post the interesting ones with captions tomorrow.

The city was fun. I initially set out to go to Walmart cause I wanted to experience the authentic side of Beijing. A really large building caught my eye though and I wandered
towards that. Then some shiny red things caught my eye on another street and I walked towards them. I felt vaguely like a gigantic cat with a really short attention span. I ended up walking down that street for a mile or two and began recognizing lots of stores. Like I could tell what served food , what sold CDs and what sold some sort of water filtration systems. I am really becoming a regular expert.

Then I walked through a big park till I was back near the hotel. I got to see an "awesome sculpture garden". I stopped in the hotel to make a phone call and planned on going back out to Walmart but ended up passing out for many hours. Woke up just in time for Spiderman 2 and a reuben. After watching this I am going to pass out. Work tomorrow so probably less exciting things to talk about.