a little fall of rain

This morning (Thursday), we had our 2 hour placement test, which I'm convinced would be impossible no matter how long we had studied Chinese. Needless to say, I'm less than confident, given that probably over 50% of my responses were complete guesses. We'll see how they place me with THAT one. After that, all of us were supposed to meet our tutors, but mine didn't show. So I had a mini-tour of campus with one of the students from CIEE instead of with my tutor.
It's a rainy day in Beijing today, which is pretty rare because this city is so dry. Apparently, the rain will help with the pollution...I hope. We'll see tomorrow.


Well for lunch, we went to a hot pot place. This place had the strangest contraption for a hot pot I had ever seen--it had this giant chimney that sparks would fly out of while it was boiling. It was definitely different. Tasty, but strange.

Since it was wet and cold outside, my roommate and I had every intention of staying inside and cuddling up with our Asian Oreos and watching movies, but some girls across the hall wanted to go to dinner so tagged along. After walking around in the area a bit, we stumbled upon a Korean BBQ place that had a lot of locals in it, so we decided to give it a whirl. I know it isn't clear in the picture, but on one of the walls there were posters of Audrey Hepburn, Che Guevara, Bob Marley and The Godfather. ON THE SAME WALL. I love Chinese versions of American culture.

I had vegetarian fried rice and it was delicious. Everyone else had all different kinds of skewered meats--beef, lamb, chicken hearts, the whole shebang. I think I ate dinner for about 2 bucks, and each of the skewers for the girls was 1 RMB, which is 1/7 of a dollar. Food is just dirt cheap here--it's awesome!!

And once again, I found Santa decorations!