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.