Summer Palace II

Summer Palace

Hello! Today my family and I went to the Summer Palace, which is about a 35 minute bus ride from my house, but still within Beijing. It was a gorgeous day, but not really any blue skies. We went pretty early to avoid most of the crowds. Everything at the Summer Palace is beautiful and must take a lot of work to maintain. There were many many tourists there, mostly Chinese. The braver of the tourists would put their children next to me and ask to take a picture. That was pretty early before I saw any other non-Chinese people there. We rented a boat and went around on the huge man made lake. I watched the scenery and my family had an intense discussion in Chinese about American swear words, which was hilarious to listen to. As far as I can tell, my host sister knows quite a few and was explaining them to her mother. It was great. After being on the lake for only an hour, the amount of tourists at least tripled, but luckily we had seen enough and waded our way through the masses to get to the exist. Then, ironically enough, we went to pizza hut for lunch. This was the first time I had eaten with anything other than chopsticks and my hands for over a week. Also, it is worth noting that pizza hut in china is much more upscale than in the US, but much cheaper.
The first week of school has been going well for me so far. I had a lot of homework this weekend, I suppose because it is a three day weekend on account of a national holiday on monday. So I had fun wading through that yesterday. All my teachers seem all right so far. My Chinese teachers are really intense, but I suppose thats why I am here. This week I hope to explore a little more of Beijing other than the area around the school and the hospital. The international hospital, which I had the honor of visiting, is very nice, by the way. All the employees are Chinese, but speak English really well. For all those curious people out there, I was there because on Monday I got hit on my right eye with a soccer ball really really hard, and I decided on Friday that since my vision was still a little blurry, I should probably see a doctor. Anyway, everything should be fine now, and now I know where the hospital is. fun stuff.
Well, thats most of the exciting stuff that has been going on so far. love you all and miss you lots,
Stephanie