Donut Friend and Another Park

This is the girl who works at the donut shop I told you about. I want to go back and talk to her again, but right now my homework is taking over my life--4-6 hours a night. I'm still not quite accustomed to it and I'm really tired, so I probably won't do anything interesting for the next few days--just homework.
The next four pictures were taken at Dongdan Park. We went there Saturday (classes started today so I wasn't exhausted and busy yet). The best thing about parks is that mostly retired people (but some other people too) do all kinds of interesting exercises and other stuff--dancing, singing, playing instruments, doing all three of those at the same time. They are nice enough to let you try and they think it is hilarious. See below.
In the park there are a few (maybe four?) buildings like this. I am pretty sure they are all Buddhist shrines/temples, but it is hard to tell what things are when your teachers only speak Chinese with you. One had a big stone buddha in it, but the other ones don't, because they were taken by western troops around 1900. You maybe have seen one in a museum. I think I have. The temples all have fresh coats of paint, which some people might think is inauthentic. I probably can't say that because my research project has taught me that authenticity is kind of what you want it to be--for example, you could say an authentic temple would be one that's about to fall apart and be gone forever, or you could argue that an authentic temple in modern times would be repainted and have people selling souvenirs inside. So I don't know.
Okay this is what I was talking about before. It is a game like tug of war--these two guys are each holding one end of a long jumprope behind their back with their right hands. you can kind of see it if you look really close. They each pull as hard as they can in different directions to try to get the other guy to move his feet. If the other guy moves his feet, the first guy wins. It looks really painful because there is a rope rubbing on your skin pretty hard.
In this picture you can see one of my ACC classmates attempting to play. The guy he is playing against has his shirt pulled up, so you can see the welts on his skin that are apparently from playing this game. The judge in the middle was playing in the last picture. You can probably see that there are many many more people watching in the second picture. That is because it is really funny to watch young foreigners play games with retired Chinese men and lose terribly.

Speaking of being a foreigner, it is still pretty common to be the only foreigner on the street here. Most people don't care because Beijing is pretty connected to the outside world and foreigners come here a lot. Interestingly though, toddlers often will stare for a long period of time. I guess you learn at a pretty young age who looks like you and who really really doesn't look like you.