"if you come across a robber, handle it calmly (such as throw your wallet on the ground and run in the opposite direction)"

Blogspot has been unblocked! Thanks, China. I'm glad we could talk this out.

Shopping in China is different in a couple of ways. Pretty much everything's cheaper, with some imported exceptions (peanut butter is kind of ridiculous), and you have to bring your own bag or else buy one at the register. There's an entire section dedicated to cooking oil: five-gallon jugs of various brands and varieties, which I originally mistook for apple juice. And of course, there are the different food products:

tastes like...er. anyway.

Chicken Rings (the Chinese literally translates to "chicken-flavored ring") are about as delicious as they sound, which is to say I'm glad they were on sale when I bought them. That having been said, though, there are a number of /wonderful/ things I've never seen before, my favorite of which is basically spicy Chex Mix minus everything but the actual Chex. Delicious.

Last but not at all least: 物美 has an escalator without stairs? It's like a moving walkway, but at about a 20 degree angle, and the novelty of riding it hasn't worn off yet. Every time I'm on it I want to take a picture, but I'm worried someone will get mad at me. And even if I took a picture, you probably wouldn't understand how cool it is.

More adventures in wearing an OOTB t-shirt: someone noticed me in the hallway today and asked if I was from Oxford's Out of the Blue. After taking a moment to clear up the confusion, I found out he's in the SoCal VoCals! We spent a while talking about various a cappella things and made plans to hang out later this week. It was interesting to hear about the workings of another group, even if it was just a bit. (They've got a new album coming out this fall that they've been working on for one and a half years, now -- apparently competing in the ICCAs keeps a group busy.)

On a related note, I almost went and saw the Whiffenpoofs sing at the Yale Club in Beijing, but it was really expensive and I had nothing to wear and a giant pile of work to do. So that didn't pan out. Which is too bad -- I would've liked to see David.

Our text book has spanned some interesting topics this week. Recent lesson titles:
- 一次性产品
- 防盗和防火
- 我不给乞丐钱
- 打官司
I like that it's a little eccentric. The dialogues are usually a little simplistic (one person is for, and one is against), but they give enough vocab to help form your own argument. Which is very cool. It's nice to be able to have a conversation in Chinese about something like welfare reform and get your point across.

I'm having dinner with my Yale Chinese teacher tonight, and with my high school Chinese teacher (who's currently in Beijing) this weekend. Teacher madness! It will probs be pretty sweet.