The Line is Busy, Please Hold

I'm alive. Barely. I have a Chinese test tomorrow, 65 new characters, some easy, most hard, all of them I'm still writing over and over to try and memorize. Tuesday, I have an Art History paper due, which needs 3 outside sources, I have two. I also have a Financial Management midterm on Tuesday, taught by a professor that barely speaks English and teaches slightly worse than he speaks English. Wednesday I have a Buddhism midterm, which is only 5 essay questions long, but still...

I had a tutoring lesson today and it was great. I met with Douglass (that's his name), at his home in the northern suburbs of Beijing. His family has not one, but two apartments in an enclosed neighborhood very close to the subway station. For the first lesson, we learned our seasons. He was a great time and we had a lot of fun drawing Halloween things, some which he thought were scary and some which he thought weren't scary. He really enjoyed learning about Easter and thought it was so funny that children would want to look for colored eggs! He didn't quite understand Thanksgiving, but I don't think I did a great job explaining the Pilgrims and Indians story. Overall, it was a great way to procrastinate and get paid at the same time.

The weather today is getting cold. I'm glad I have four long sleeve shirts, they are all being used too frequently, and before I know it, people will notice I only have four. The leaves are kind of changing, but mostly they just turn brown and fall off the trees. Just the other night, we all went out and saw James Bond's new movie. It was OK. I'm not a movie critic, nor do I really watch movies often, but none of us were really impressed by the new flick. I'm still waiting for Brittany's photos of Guilin, so please hold on a few more days. As soon as I'm done with the chaos of school I'll get around to making some spectacular albums. If only I didn't push everything off to the last minute...

To keep everyone a little interested, here's some photos of us around Beijing before we left for Guilin. This is just some of our bike ride when Sean broke his arm, the Forbidden City trip I took with my art class, and a few randoms.

Around Beijing II

Oh, and by the way. I'm going to Tokyo. Tickets are booked, everything is done, and I'm leaving the second weekend in December. And, I'm booking tickets to Hong Kong this week. We'll leave the first weekend of December. So, pretty much what I'm saying is that the adventures don't end until the last week of China. I can already predict that those pictures won't be posted until after I'm back in the US, but I'll do my best to get them up during finals week. Take care.