Gah Wednesdays

It was really hard to wake up this morning. I have Taiji classes at 7:00am but when that alarm went off... It was tempting to hit snooze. Luckily, I've started to use my cell phone as my alarm clock and I don't know how to hit snooze yet.

Rachel was supposed to go to Taiji today. She got up, took 20 minutes in the bathroom and then waltzes out with, "Uhn, yeah, I don't want to have to get up this early. I'm not going."

... Meanwhile, I have to scramble to get dressed, brush my teeth and put my contacts in because I AM going. Some people.

I have little patience or sympathy for the lazy.

After Taiji, I wolfed down my breakfast (some soupy yogurt and a piece of bread) and headed off to chinese class. We biked there today; its not far but Allie and I had an errand to run (no pun intended, see below) during our class break.

Anyways, 3 hours of Chinese class is a long time. Sigh. At least my laoshi is funny if also very demanding and very... well... Chinese.

During our 20 minute break, we biked over to the auditorium to register for the *gasp* Beijing 2007 marathon! Well, kind of. Allie's running the half marathon. I wanted to run to the 5 km (approx 3 miles...) but the spaces were all taken. So I'm signed up to run the 8 km *shudders* We'll see how it goes. The most physical thing I've done since my back surgery was climb the Great Wall. I know that sounds impressive, but I'm not sure I can run for more than 5 minutes straight right now.

Plus, its hard in Beijing because, ya know, they don't have oxygen only pollution.

I had a stupid moment during class though. In general, I don't like to leave in the middle of any class but today I was just slinging back my entire nalgene and sure enough had to pee so badly. Now, part of my bathroom aversion is out of respect, part of it is out of not wanting to draw too much attention to myself and part of it is because I prefer my dorm bathroom to the public bathrooms here. Don't get me wrong, this toilets really have some things going for them.

Think... toilet bowl, sunken into the ground. And subtract any sort of sitting device. Thus, you have a chinese squatter. Now, its quite easy if you have a skirt or what have you, but--if you've ever done a lot of camping, you'll agree--it takes some balance to and self knowledge to not piss all over the back of your pants, if you happen to be wearing pants. Luckily this is something that I've done before and can do and probably will do often here, but its just different enough that I'm very eh about it.

I think part of my "eh" has to do with the fact that we are not allowed to flush toilet paper, so even though you are entering a seemingly clean, indoor bathroom, you get the out-house scent. If I were going to an outhouse, that would be fine but everytime it surprises me.

So lesson learned, I just need to regulate my fluid intake for those 3 hour long classes.

Tonight we are going to quiz night at Lush. Its a westerner style bar but they've made their quiz night into a chinese culture/language/music everything. We've tried to stack our team (I suggested having auditions) but we'll see how the evening goes.

Tomorrow I have off and I don't think we have laboratory--it'll be a pure work day.

Oh and a story from last evening:

Allie and I ended up going to the Medicine House for food. We're sitting, enjoying our meal and these two college age guys come in, sit down near us and light up. Despite the fact that there is a no smoking sign on their table... and the window sill... and, actually, 10 other no smoking signs around the rest of the room. All in pictures, English and Chinese.

So, being the asshole from Boston that I am, at the end of our meal, I head over to their table.
Jen: "Excuse me, guys? Can either of you read fluent Chinese?"
Smoker 1: "No, its one of my ultimate goals though,"
Smoker 2: "Yes, unfortunately, our speaking and listening skills are a lot better than our reading skills."
Jen: *long pause, cannot believe they buying into this so well* "Oh well, I was just wondering, 'cause the sign's also in English" *nods towards no smoking sign and walks off before they can turn around again*

It was perfectly played.