rolling backpacks are universally ugly

Pictures from the Olympic Park and Tianenmen Square/Forbidden City are finally on my photo blog, in case you were wondering. Shoutout to Miles for lending me his mini USB cord for his calculator. Right now I'm sitting in a room that smells faintly of urine with my mom waiting for Billy to finish English class. He goes to school on Sunday to learn English, so that means school 6 days a week. Today he went from 10-12 and 4:00-7:10, which means we will be sitting here for another hour and ten minutes. Earlier we went to a market and bought a hula hoop and a rolling backpack for me. My mom thought the hula hoop would be good exercise for the family, and decided to get a rolling backpack because I was sore from carrying 200 lbs on my back every day. It was originally 150 kuai, and my mom was in disbelief about how expensive it was, so she told the seller she saw it for 70 kuai at the grocery store (which it wasn't). The seller scoffed and insisted his was the best price, so my mom took me by the arm and we started to walk away, and the seller ran after us and said "fine! Seventy kuai." It's pink and has a large Hello Kitty on the front. Super cute, I know. It'll look really good with my uniform. I'm expecting a trend to start. My mom made fun of me for getting one because it's fit for more of a first grader, but I would rather have good posture than care about backpack fashion.

As we were walking through the market, we saw a really tiny adorable toy poodle. Mom offered to buy me a dog, even though she said she and Billy are scared of them. Of course I said no, because that would be absurdly nice of her, but I secretly would love an animal to cuddle. I'll settle with staring at the koi fish in the living room.

Tianenmen Square and the  Forbidden City were  pretty fantastic. When we arrived at the square, herds of sellers immediately flocked towards us and started to sell us Communist hats, Mao's  red book, maps of Beijing, and more miscellaneous China-related thingys. I gave in and bought a hat for a staggering 10 kuai. The city itself was huge. There seemed to be an endless  amount of temples, but for some reason, the group I was with got to the end about an hour before everyone else. We sat down for a moment and sellers once again saw their opportunity to make some money, even though there were just four of is. One tried getting me to buy a rickshaw ride, but was dejected once he realized I spoke good Chinese. Another seller thought our exchange was humorous and he took a picture of us on my phone. When we got back to school it was around 5:30, an hour later than expected. I was also surprised to find that I was supposed to go to dinner with the old ladies in charge of the tutoring program for retired intellectuals. So me, three other students who volunteers, and the ladies went out to get baozi, which has become a staple food in my every day life. They bought plenty of food and were sweet and adorable, but we all ended up leaving the place at 7:00 and we all still had loads of homework to finish and all of the Chinese provinces and capitals and surroundings countries to study for a test the next day.

I've been slacking on homework, only because for the past two school nights I didn't stay up past 9:30. My plan has been to go to bed early and wake up at 3:30am to study or do homework, but it hasn't worked out so well since each time I studied for about an hour and decide to go back to sleep. This is nothing like I've ever experienced before, but I'll force myself to get used to it.

I just had a staring contest with a baby until his mom noticed and I felt awkward so I came back to writing this. I'm obsessed with the babies here. Every one I have seen is adorable and round and soft and I want to squeeze their fat cheeks!!!

Well, that's it for the week-ish. So much has been happening, yet nothing has, because I'm getting used to everything. This is my life now!