so it has been a while since I have posted. i am going to try to catch everyone up with what i have been up to. i wrote some posts up at the hotel and am copying and pasting them into the ones i am posting tonight so they might not be the smoothest reading posts.

this is the start of the Friday posts

last time i posted i was talking about the overpass of death, here it is at night. This picture does not capture the true terror of walking through there but hopefully it gives you an idea.

i met up with an old co-worker (objectspaces represent) for lunch and we ate at a restaurant right around the corner from my hotel. Most of the menu is in English so i can go back and get some of the great food. We also had corn juice. This was actually a lot better than it might sound. It was warm and tasty. The only food i have had a hard time eating so far though involved corn. It was a corn, watermelon, mushroom and egg salad. The mix was not very good and there was something unknown in there that might have been ground beef. Anyways it was cool talking with someone who was able to answer a lot of the random questions i had stored up. i also almost doubled my grasp of Chinese phrases. Now i know how to ask for the bill and a box for my food. i tried to figure out what one word i had heard repeatedly in conversation was but as Michael put it "the way you are pronouncing it? it means nothing". i did finally find out what it meant though, see the dinner post for that.

below are some additional pics. The blue sign is for the new subway line they are building. They are trying to complete four additional lines before the Olympics and they are still digging the tunnels for this one at least. Good luck on that. i liked that it is human oriented.

the bikes are right outside my hotel. Gives you an idea of what i meant by ancient.