August 25: Beijing.

I've been awake since three this morning rolling around on the hard pallet of a bed in building 17 of BLCU.  The sky outside is dark, save for the light pollution melding with the pollution of the city creating a spot of daylight in the night.  Even at night the smog is visible.  Over the course of the morning the sky has changed from dark blue to red to yellow to its present gray.  If Xi'an is like this it will be odd not seeing the moon or stars, or even more than a glimmer of the sun, for a full semester.  It's a little different being able to stare straight at the sun for extended periods of time and not be blinded by it.

It's five now and it sounds as if everybody in the building is already awake and clomping through the hallways.  The walls are thin, but more than that early to bed, early to rise is the Chinese way.  The entire city of Beijing is awake.

Hours of listening to a lecture on health and safety was followed by walking through highly polluted rain that actually requires a shower after having been in.  The walk led us to delicious Hallal food, I can't promise the spelling on that one, but it's food prepared according to Muslim rules.  If you are ever in China, Hallal restaurants tend to be cleaner places for food but that's not a promise you won't still get sick.
                                 I want to see a blue sky here, just to see what it looks like.

                                             北京 The view from Building 17, BLCU
                                                      That's not fog, that's the air.

The language placement test is tomorrow, I may look like a fool or i may do okay.  I guess I will just have to see.  Really all I want is to go to Xi'an though it is good to be able to do all the tourist stuff in Beijing.  We won't have time for the Great Wall, but maybe I'll get to see the part of it that's near Xi'an.  It's nowhere near as iconic but it was part of it.  I'm getting super excited for the silk Road Trip.  I am going to consume all of the yak products when we go to Tibet, or at least near it.

Crossing large, busy roads, even when the crosswalk says you can go turns out to be a heart racing experience every time, especially when you are in a group of foreigners.  Following bright flashes of light on the smoggy night sky brought our little group on a two hour walk through Beijing.  We initially set off to find fried dough products, even though they are a breakfast food, by by the end of the walk we had found neither, only the Merry Mart and the Happiness Mart, where happiness came in the form of cheap fake shit items :)