*bump*

Well not only am I bumped from the class I was going to help teach, but I got bumped from the class I was going to take. Rightfully, so, really... the instructor decided to teach in Chinese because most of the attendees are young fresh-out-of-school Chinese people, and although he offered his sister to be my personal translator, I figured I'd just step out since I would have to leave early to check out anyway. I got his info so I can get the slides from him and maybe ask him a few questions.

So now I have a few minutes for things I've thought of but haven't written about...

- The driving in Beijing is rather scary, only there seems to be some orderly system. People drive between lanes in traffic until they figure out which lane will go faster and then they dart into that one. Taxis and other cars edge into the next lane over until either the person there gives way or they almost crash. They really get inches away from each other all the time. And if somebody is trying to edge you out, you just honk your horn "beep beep beep beep" to let them know that you will not be stopping to let them in. The amount of darting between lanes when there doesn't seem like there's room for it is amazing. Strangely, though, I haven't felt more than once or twice like we might actually get into an accident, and I've only seen one accident on the road. Weird.

- So all those Great Wall photos in the mist? Well the day before I went was perfectly clear and the day after I went was perfectly clear. Figures! Today and yesterday at the conference have been misty, though, so it's not like that one day was the only cloudy one.

- I forgot to mention that we passed through the Olympic Village! I saw the bird's nest stadium, the athelete apartments, the archery and tennis buildings, and the swimming building. Very cool! Also, they have Olympic stores everywhere selling gear. And I've even seen ads on tv teaching "Olympic English". The last one I saw was learning how to say "a strong will". :)

- I'm amazed at how many of the characters I can recognize on signs because of the Japanese I learned so many years ago. I don't always remember the meaning, but I have learned that the meanings in Japanese are pretty much the same as they are in Chinese, even though the spoken words are completely different. My counting 1 to 10 in Japanese characters is the same for Chinese. Also, since I'm somewhat used to looking at characters, I can recognize some of the same words when I see them on signs. Pretty cool!

- The huge groups of gigantic apartment buildings that are everywhere in Beijing are just unreal. The buildings are so huge and then they'll be 8-12 clumped together and then you'll see dozens of those clumps as you drive around. I mean, there's 17 million people in the city, so they need someplace to live, but the buildings just seem so impersonal to me. Or maybe it's just that they are foreign to me. And big. Very big.