'Week-end pix

The large lake at Beida (Beijing university). We biked around it.
A pagoda (by the lake) at Beida. It's funny, my cousin has spent eight years in Beijing. She's now taking six hours of Chinese a week - studying writing, tones, and vocabulary - and yet she still has difficulty reading the plaques with the descriptions of the tourist places. She says learning Chinese is never-ending.
This was the view behind the pagoda. A stream went to it (the pagoda) at some point.
A bridge at the old Summer Palace.
Me in front of the ruins of part of the Summer Palace - destroyed by my ancestors (Anglo-French forces)! Every plaque reminded us that this place had been ransacked by foreigners, yet the official sign at the entrance of the park had some whited-out parts with a "revised" description of what occurred in 1890 (when the Anglo-French forces attacked). My cousin told me that in the past the description was really horrid so recently the Chinese changed it to make it less displeasing for foreigners.

I'm wearing the new coat I bought for $50 Cdn at Xidan (I bought it with two of my students the day we went to repair my camera).

A model of what the Old Summer Palace must've looked like. It's very European in style and the gardens were also modelled along European lines. The Chinese like to put money in these glass boxes - I guess it brings luck.
Some impressive ruins, but apparently they're not totally "real" in the sense that the stone doesn't necessarily date from the Old Summer Palace but was designed and placed to look like what the ruins used to look like.
A picture to prove "I was there."
There's a cool maze with a fancy pagoda (bottom picture) in the middle. The maze is easy but it took at least two or three minutes to walk from the outside to the centre (the pagoda), and as you can see, it's really not far from the entrance to the centre. If one could walk directly it would take maybe ten seconds.

There are a lot of these little shops at all the touristy places. They sell bits and pieces of everything. Film for cameras, jewelry, bags, kites...mostly souvenirs.

It's getting awfully cold here in Beijing.

I went to French corner with Loic this evening. Time passed quickly. We talked about a lot of different things. The students are nice.

I've got to work tomorrow and I haven't even prepared much...oh well...

I played a bit of soccer with some of my students from the Continuing Education department this afternoon. There's a new student and he likes to play soccer so we passed the ball and shot some goals and mostly sprinted trying to catch the ball. There were four different groups playing on one field, sharing three goals (nets), but it was all good. And since I was white, and a girl to boot (haven't seen a Chinese girl playing soccer yet), we were allowed a goal (net) all to ourselves.

Can't wait to sleep. Good night.