Berlin

I went to Berlin to visit Martin! Lots of walking, train-taking, dancing, sausages, marzipan, Haribo, and drinking beer in public.

Rome

Becky visited me in Copenhagen! About half the time was spent snuggling in my hammock in various parks around Copenhagen. Quite relaxing.

And then we went to Rome, where half the time was spent eating delicious pizza, pasta, and gelato. YUM. We went to a restaurant with no menu. For 25 euros, you got 4 mystery courses, and wine.

And of course we went to Giolitti's gelato place, about 5 times. It's amazing. Their "small" cone is a giant cone with 3 flavors and whip cream on top.

Great vacation.

Climbing

I went wall climbing at a gym last weekend. When we were about to leave, I jumped from the top of a bouldering problem, maybe 10 feet, onto the heavily-padded ground. But as I was falling I noticed a small gap in the pads. One of my feet landed right in between these two pads. As soon as I landed my ankle was in a LOT of pain. I immediately got ice on it and kept it elevated. But I'm pretty sure I sprained it. What do you think, based on this picture? This was taken a bit more than 2 days later, once the bruise fully came in.

I almost walk without limping, so it feels like it's getting a lot better really quickly. So I'm not too worried.

China

Beijing was very interesting. Things were quite cheap: 32 oz beers for 67 cents, 45 minutes taxi rides for $11, taking the subway for 30 cents, lunch with drinks for $3, decent buffet for $9, etc.

Summer Palace was beautiful. And the Wall was spectacular!!! And the whole time, it was spectacularly hot and humid.

At the conference at the beach, I found it very interesting that a lot of the Chinese people at the conference had NEVER been to the beach before, and a lot of them hadn't even been swimming before and/or couldn't swim.

The food was good. REALLY oily, and salty. And lots of meat, but the meat was harder to eat because there were usually bones and tendons, etc.

I bought a fake rolex for $20. It looks nice, but we'll see if it works in a week.

The Great Wall

China update. We went on a group excursion to where the Great Wall reaches the sea, which is called the dragon's head, because the wall is sort of a long dragon. It wasn't totally amazing, but pretty cool. The best part was the fact that a couple of times, random chinese people came up to me and asked if they take a picture WITH me. Apparently they don't see many westerners.

I plan on going to the Great Wall again this weekend, to a more scenic section in the mountains.

Night Swimming in China

Last night we had a beer on the beach (32 oz cost about $1.80), and then went swimming. The water was so warm!!! And there was this disco music playing on the beach. It was very asian-sounding techno, a lot like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_qwUS8Uqjg

Chinese people dance funny. There were a bunch of little kids who were basically hopping to this music.

Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, and Beijing

I went to Amsterdam, Paris, and Brussels with Paul. Ate a lot of frites, bread and cheese, and chocolate, respectively.

Now I'm in Beijing for a conference. I've been eating chinese food every meal for 24 hours, and this trend will continue for the whole week. I'm already kind of sick of all that salty food.