Ramblings

RW and I have been picked up by driver Shen to work each day. It is a 20-30 minute ride, not too bad. The office is quiet. The intranet speed his horrific. I have trouble getting an external internet site at all. We will have to see if there is anything we can do to fix that. We have settled in on the 15 RMB lunch buffet. Lots of good warm dishes, drinks, fruit. The room needs a lot of work. It is a temporary cafeteria on the 3rd floor. There are nice bright yellow plastic seats for tables of 4 and a cement floor.

We take the taxi back home. Thank goodness the Intercontinental Hotel is next door, otherwise it might be difficult to hail a taxi as the office buildings are set off the busy west 2nd Ring Rd. (think a very slow congested beltway).

Speaking of Intercontinental, RW and I went to lunch at the hotel to see what they had to offer. There were a few options on the 5th floor. We went to a nice Cantonese restaurant called Si Chou Lu. The food was good and had English and Chinese so I knew what I was getting. The service was top rate, but I'm starting to get used to the $1.85 meal. I had to laugh that RW my good Chinese colleague wanted a fork because the nice chopsticks were to slippery.

RW's house shipment is coming today. My immigration papers are being completed today so my shipment can be sent and maybe we will get it sometime next week. AF and I cannot wait for our stuff to come. We are sleeping on the most uncomfortable rock hard beds. BF bought us some featherbedding that I hope will help. These beds are so bad they feel like you are sleeping on the floor. AF says she is getting bruises on her hips and knees.

The last few days have been in the high 80's lots of humidity and of course smog. This is a view from our apartment today looking north (bei).






I think I am up to maybe 5 mandarin words:
ni hao - hello
zaijian - good bye
xie xie - thank you
lu- street
bei - north
non- south

AF has volleyball tryouts tonight. She leaves at 7am and comes back tonight at 7pm, yuck! Seems like all the kids live out by the school in Shunyi. So tryouts dont start until 4:30 so kids have time to go home and then return for practice. PRactice is over before 6pm and AF catches thebus right at 6. It takes an hour to get back to the city because they drop a teacher off in a very conjested area.

CB landed in Beijing today. Will try to see him this weekend to welcome him to the China. He is by himself until SL lands on the 25th and will reside in same building. WL, QL, WW all arrive tomorrow.