Hello!

Sorry for the lack of posting, I've had some very large computer problems over the last week or so. That's over now, though, so now that I've got the chance...

There's actually a lot to do in China in your free time, if you're so inclined. Shopping is big here - there's tons of stores with clothes, food, books, electronics, and almost everything you might want. If you're looking for video games or reliable computer software, however, that is something this place does not have in abundance. Malls and small stores are everywhere, and you can bargain for larger purchases fairly easily, if you can speak just a little Chinese; enough to say prices. There are very few places that you cannot bargain; supermarkets are one such place. This being said, the supermarkets are also usually cheaper than you can bargain a lot of places down to, if not by much. They are also harder to get to; it's a thirty-five minute walk to the nearest one from my dorm room, which, compared to the little places around the dorm room, almost make it not worth going to sometimes.

You can almost always find a basketball game to jump into within about three blocks of where you are. There are two kinds of parks - one that pretty much only has basic workout/stretching equipment (treadmills made of rollers are actually fairly cool to watch), and places for basketball/other sports. The second type is rarer, and usually within the confines of a set of buildings. The basketball courts are constantly in use, even after it gets dark out. Soccer is the other big sport here, but it's much harder to jump into a game here - usually the field is being used by the official school team.

Then there is the ever-present TV. Dramas and news are on almost constantly, and there's English, Korean and Japanese channels here as well. In addition, there are tons of movies for very cheap. They're sold everywhere and cost very little.

And then there's just the sights around town; huge buildings, construction for the Olympics, the local schools, from elementary school to graduate schools, locals flying kites, practising any of the myriad of martial arts they've learned or doing an impromptu showing of Beijing Opera. If you're at all motivated, it's really hard to get bored here, except perhaps late at night where there's not much of this going on.

Some new words!

电视剧: Dianshiju (pronounced Dee-en shee ju). Dianshi is "television, and "ju" is drama.

块钱：kuai qian (pronounced kwai chee-en). The effective shorthand for RMB. It's used differently, however; a bit hard to explain in this regard.

篮球：lanqiu (pronounced lahn cheeou). Basketball.

商店：shangdian (pronounced shahng dee-en). General store.

Zaijian!

-Tom