Early Autumn Cold

So sorry that I haven't posted recently. Nothing terribly exciting has been happening, and more than that 很不舒服 (I'm kind of sick). No, it's not food poisoning... it is actually legitimately just the first cold of the season. Ugh. Building on that, in an effort to battle the pounds that delicious and greasy Chinese street food is helping me pack on, I went on a run today. Basically, I jogged up the main road next to my school for about 2 miles in an effort to find something green. No such luck, of course, since you know, I live in Beijing. And well, the moral of this story is that some combination of my clogged sinuses, my lack of fitness, and of course, ALL OF THE POLLUTION IN THE WORLD rendered me physically unable to run for any longer than that. No really though, I can now understand how people develop asthma from pollution. I mean, for Christ's sake, I was hacking up half a lung by the time I got out to 五环路. So tomorrow, I am going to explore the gym options in the area as well as bike options because there are actually green parks somewhere that maybe are a little easier to breathe in (actually, Olympic Park is only like 7km away from my school). They just all happen to be just barely too far to walk to.

In any case, most of this past week has been devoted pretty much just to classes, rugby, and recuperation. I switched up to the next level of Mandarin (Upper Elementary instead of Elementary), and I think it suits me better. The Elementary class was basically all review, and once I got into the groove of things, it was clearly too easy. The Upper Elementary class is pretty similar to Chinese IV at MIT, so I think it'll be a good fit. The nice (and not so nice) thing is that because I wrote in the Elementary book (not thinking I would be switching), I had to buy it, which was bad because it was 68块 I really could've kept, but good because I can always refer back to it to refresh on those things that are missing from my basic Chinese skills. :)

We did have our first official rugby match(es) this past Saturday, so I have some pictures of that. Unfortunately, I left my camera at a friend's so I'll post those when I get it back.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share this glorious gem:

Incidentally, the greatest thing about this is that I don't think people who aren't from the USA quite understand what Hooters is really famous for. Haha.

hearts and stars,

马雅