Today is laundry day. After two long days, I plan to have a mellow day today. My main goal is to find a foot massage place, to help me recover from yesterdays hike. (I feel asleep at 8PM last night after "hiking the great wall".)
Anyway, just some random thoughts. First thing to note is that crossing the street is an olympic event here in Beijing. There are cars, bicycles, buses, pedestrians, and mopeds all fighting for the limited space on the street. It sometimes takes me 10 minutes to cross the street, after risking life and limb to duck around the vehicles.
I am still quite overwhelmed by Beijing. It is really huge (I have seen only 2-3 neighborhoods so far), and my inability to comunicate is a real challenge. Everyone is very friendly as they apologize for not being able to speak english (its their country, shouldn't I be the one who speaks chinese?). I also find the fact that there are english and chinese names for places, and they are sometimes different, so you can't always just say the name of the place you are trying to get to and gesture as you can in most of the world. (And I am sure I mispronounce everything).
I can't remember if I mentioned this, but there seems to be two economies here. There are a few neighboorhoods with western prices where the rich and hip hang out, but most other places are cheap. The barber I went to certainly is not getting rich anytime soon...
