A very long Friday

On Friday afternoon, several of the other CET students and I set out to have some lunch. When we finished our tasty bowls of beef noodles, we decided to continue walking through the city. Before long, we found ourselves deep in the city. We wound our way through a few narrow allies and eventually found ourselves at the banks of a river. We followed the river taking plenty of pictures until we reached a bridge. Upon crossing the bridge, we were once again lucky enough to stumble upon an interesting part of Beijing. Apparently, there is some sort of fertility park in Beijing, which is filled with sculptures relating to birth and life. The park also contained a playground, except the playground was full of gymnastic training equipment. I did not see a single child, but some old creepy guy did come to the playground and hang upside down from the monkey bars. Apparently that’s cool in China. Yes, I do have a picture of him doing this, just check out the flikr site.
After laughing at the old man for a while, we noticed that there were people actually swimming and lathering up in the river, which may not sound very weird, but this river was a dark green tint that reminded me of the slime from Double Dare. I wouldn't have put my pinky toe in, much less bathe in there. We continued our journey home and eventually came across three boys who gladly let us take their picture (which is also on the flikr site). One of them was carrying a folding chair and the others were eating handfuls of some sort of fruit. It was really bizarre.
When we finally reached another bridge while attempting to return to campus, Muh and I spotted the roof of some sort of ancient Chinese building. We all decided to check it out, and set off to find the entrance. Along the way, I was solicited to buy a cell phone from a random guy on the sidewalk who followed me for about five minutes offering a price of 700 Yuan (roughly $90). It was good Chinese practice, but he was creepy and I didn't need a cell phone, so we parted ways at the entrance to our mystery building. It turned out to be some sort of Chinese art museum. We did not actually go inside, but the architecture and details of the outside of the building were amazing.
We made it back to campus just in time for roommates to begin arriving. It turns out we had been walking for about five hours straight, which is not the best idea before meeting roommates. However, when I returned I was still without my roommate, which was sort of discouraging. So, I headed to dinner with all of the other CET students who had not received their roommates. Upon returning from a tasty dinner (except for the fish dish, which seemed to be some sort of barracuda?) I found my new Chinese roommate and his girlfriend watching TV in my room. So began the awkwardness that is now my life. My Chinese is not good, and his English is not too hot either. So, there is a lot of blank stares and awkward silences. However, they both seemed to be very nice and patient with my lack of Chinese knowledge. His name is "gao ray" and I totally forgot his girlfriend’s name, but our evening ended with a walk over to her dorm and then a long walk back to our own dorm with more exciting awkwardness. But, I think I will learn a lot with the language barrier between us, so I am going to try to take advantage of the opportunity as much as possible.