北京

I'm back. Sorry about the extremely long pause there; I was finishing off things in Kunming and didn't have that much time/inclination last week.  But now I have just arrived in Beijing, so I will possibly be back in form.  Hopefully I'll have some reflections on Kunming to post at some point pretty soon, but for now I want to talk about first impressions of this city.

1) It's BIG.  There are a lot of people living here, but more than that the place is massive.  I'd heard people say things along the lines of Beijing is built on a superhuman, rather than human, scale, and I'm definitely impressed that that is the case.  All the roads I've been on are 4-5 lanes each direction, and the blocks are gigantic.  I went walking for about forty minutes earlier, in a straight line, and literally crossed one street. 

2) It's pleasant.  I know that the pollution here is legendary, but I didn't see it today.  There was a huge brown pall that we had to descend through (I think it made the plane more turbulent than normal), but on the ground the sky was blue and absolutely gorgeous, just a little brown smudge on the horizon.  And it was cool! I forgot how much I love fall, but the air was that perfect crispness and it made me very, very happy.

3) It's inhabited by pirates!!! No joke.  I'd heard about the Beijing accent--it's actually what we studied, since my textbooks were printed here--but I still wasn't prepared to hear it spoken, especially by people who were being serious. Essentially, they add R's to the end of many, many words.  Literally multiple times a sentence. It's pretty awesome.  So you get people saying things like "Ni zairrrr narrrrrrrr??" or "Wo zhu zairrr zharrrrrrrr"  I approve :-).

The other nice thing about this place for me at the moment is that it's back in civilization. Kunming was a big city, but this is definitely more equipped with cushy pleasures.  Illustration:

--I just took a shower after dark using hot water that was not warmed by the sun.

--Then I pooped, sitting down, and flushed the toilet by pressing a button (not pouring a bucket of water in) and all of it disappeared.  What a sight.

--My clothes are currently in a dryer (granted, I'm paying $5 for the experience).

--I'm using high-speed wifi and have not had my connection suddenly disappear for over an hour.

:-D.  This stuff isn't really worth rejoicing over for very long, but it is kind of nice... 

Also I finally learned how to use my Chinese typing software correctly.  Yay! 所以现在我能写更多汉字！ I typed that so quickly, too!!!