The Wild American Magazine Chase, The Forbidden City, and other Stories

Hello all!

It has been a while since I last blogged, in part because I have been out seeing Beijing more, which means I have to study more efficiently, which makes me pretty tired. Also, I caught a cold this week, which also kept me drinking lots of fluids and trying to take better care of myself. But now my cold is almost completely gone and my Sunday is pretty free, so I thought I'd let you guys know what I've been up to a little bit! This is the Forbidden City. As one of my lessons explains, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Beijing, so it is always crowded with people.
The Forbidden City (or Gu Gong) is huge--this is one corner courtyard but they extend almost as far as you can see. I am not sure how best to explain it. You keep walking and there are just more and more of them. Being in places like this always makes me imagine what it used to look like in its prime. What were people wearing? What did they do?
The detail on the buildings is amazing. These are animals--there is a good story behind this that my teacher told us but I usually understand about 30% of what they say, so it is not enough to repeat it for you guys.
I hardly ever give you all pictures of me, so here's one! These are classmates and friends and schoolmates, and two teachers. We have a good time.
Whenever I see beautiful gardens, I want to take pictures for my mom. I loved this one. I probably could have spent another two hours at the Forbidden City at least looking at things I didn't get to see, like more gardens, but we were tired at this point and had to go home. Next time!

There is so much more I want to tell you about. Last weekend we went to a village in the country and stayed with people there. Their houses have been converted to be able to welcome tourists. They cooked for us, and we climbed a mountain and saw pagodas. Also there were cute dogs.

Then, Wednesday was my roommate's birthday, so after class I embarked on a quest to find her an American magazine under the pretext of "going somewhere else to study." Three subway stops and two bookstores later, I found a rack with Newsweek, the Economist, Time, and Vogue.
It was a good adventure and it forced me to use my Chinese to ask for directions and help.

Finally, I started work on my research project, which involves going to historical neighborhoods and interviewing people who live there about what they think about tourism in their neighborhoods. My Chinese is good enough to ask the questions I want to ask, but not good enough to understand the responses fully, so a teacher went with me to help with the hard parts.

All of these last three adventures have pictures and more stories, so if we are lucky I'll elaborate later this week.