Bad, bad Becca.

I have a valid excuse for not blogging, I swear! According to all of my sources, the reason we haven't had access to any foreign websites recently is because of the earthquake in Taiwan. Apparently some cables were snapped, seriously impeding telecommunications between Asia and the U.S. It's sort of freaky to think about how little it would take to cut us off from everybody we care about, so I'm going to change the subject.

There have been many blogworthy moments in the past two weeks, but I'm sure I won't remember them all. The weekend before Christmas was a mad rush, though I'm not really sure why. We stayed in that Saturday, but I don't get the impression we rested much and Sunday we left early for Beijing. We spent most of our morning in the cafe where we have gone a lot lately to fill up on Western style breakfasts. Although both are edible, eggs and toast certainly beat boiled cabbage and fried peanuts for breakfast.

Later in the day we headed towards Tianamen Square because we had plans to meet a friend at 6 p.m. As a brief preface, this is a friend that loves to walk, you'll soon understand why this is important. He had given us a card for the restaurant and told us it was "10 minutes away" from Tianamen. So, we started walking. We walked to Wanfujing and thought it would be a block or so north of there. We walked and walked and walked right out of that neighborhood asking, every five minutes or so, where the restaurant was. Most people didn't know and a few people just told us to keep going straight. To make a long story short, it took us from 5 p.m. at Tianamen until 6:30 to arrive at the restaurant. Only then did we find out that it was 10 minutes from Tianamen by bus. Next time I'll ask.

The food was odd, but most of it tasted good. What made the meal interesting, however, were the dances and other performances during dinner. It was an "imperial" restaurant. All in all it made for a nice evening.

Christmas was average, as usual. Without family, it just isn't Christmas. Dan and I exchanged gifts and then went downstairs to make brunch with all the others who were around. It was a decent brunch, but it was rushed because there were people going to the Great Wall for a walk. Dan and I stayed back, partly because he has a hurt ankle, and partly because it just seemed like too much.

The next day, I played hooky and Dan and I went into Beijing again (Dan actually doesn't work on Tuesdays anyway). We went to Tianamen Square and started walking north. We were aiming for Beihai park, but were distracted by Hutongs, the old dilapidated villages that have been preserved. The Chinese seem very good at letting buildings go for a long time and then "preserving" them just as their about to topple over. It seems more romantic I guess.

When we finally got close to the top of the park, we saw another park which looked interesting. We went in and climbed up a small hill (which is apparently the highest point in Beijing (not including tall buildings), hoping to get a view. It was, unfortunately, a little too cloudy to see much of anything, but we'll go back on a clear day and take pictures. So, we walked from one pagoda to another until we were back at the bottom of the hill. It was getting late, so it was time to go back.

The following day it was back to the daily grind, though when a week only has three days it's a lot easier to handle! I take that back, it was three and a half days because they made us work Saturday morning, but it was still o.k.

Yesterday, we went into Beijing with Michael and Naomi just to walk around. This time we went to Hou Hai park (just North of Bei Hai) and went chair skating on the lake. They literally put blades on chairs and give you two poles with screw drivers welded on the end to push yourself around. Two of us fit on one chair so Dan and I raced, and beat, all the little kids that would take us on. This, however, led to a snowball fight (Dan against about 12 little kids). Unfortunately, I don't think he can claim victory.

We walked around a lot more after that. It was a beautiful, albeit cold, day. By the time we got back to Huijia, we were all pretty exhausted and the rest of New Year's consisted of Boggle and movies. I feel so old!