Colds, Mountains, and Bad Ass Movies…

My voice has been censored! Actually I think it’s all blogspots but for some reason I can’t view blog pages anymore. I can access the page to post entries, I just can’t read any… Now that I think about it, I’ve been having trouble accessing a lot of Western media lately. By Western media I mean ESPN. Maybe the Chinese are just as upset as I am about Texas getting knocked out of the Tournament and their just lashing out at ESPN for it… I guess that’s one theory.

I’ve had this head cold for the past week. Though it’s often hard to tell the difference between illness and everyday living. I’m referring of course to this fantastic Beijing air I get to breathe on a daily basis. There are few places on earth where the air quality is so bad you can actually chew the air. Playing basketball outside is like smoking a pack of cigarettes…

We’re starting to take field trips for our classes. It’s a pretty cool hands-on experience to see the things we’ve only read about. Last Saturday we took a 3 hour bus ride up to Hebei Province to see the mountain tomb of some prince and his wife who died like a million years ago or something like that. The tombs and history and crap were alright, but our descent down the mountain was amazing! They built a long ass slide starting from the top of mountain to the parking lot. Everyone got their own little bobsled with adjustable handbrake. The joy of sliding down a mountain and the terror of questionable Chinese slide construction alone was worth the trip.

300! I finally found a good copy of it* at the local Wu-Mei (Chinese Quickie-Mart). Total guy movie. Lots of fighting, beautiful women, and marginal plot line. Watching 300 will make you want to:

1. Grow a beard.
2. Learn to fight with a spear and sword.
3. Fight other people with spears and swords.


Left: View from halfway up the mountain. Many of us stopped frequently to take pictures of the scenery. It was not because it was a particularly pretty day and we wanted to remember it forever, we're all just terribly out of shape but didn't want to seem like a pansy stopping for a rest.
Center: Note the silver line streaking across the mountain. That was the glorious slide waiting to take us to our sweet chariot (the bus) home.
Right: The steep and treacherous path we took to the tomb... just kidding, I was just tired and wanted to take a picture. The actual path up was well paved and came with handrails.


Left: Vahan about to get push down the mountain...
Right: Peeing Boy Statue! It was glorious! It was proudly standing in front of the restarant we ate at in Hebei, valiently protecting the building from thristy frogs.

* The first copy we bought off a dude on a bicycle for 5 kuai, it was hilariously poor quality, we’re talking cell phone video type quality… finally had to put in the big bucks and find a 10 kuai copy.