I feel like we haven't relaxed for one second since we've gotten here. But this weekend we will have some free time. Today we went to visit the Shanxi University of Photography, where our professor gave a lecture. We brought some of our work and shared it with the students. They really enjoyed it, I think. I don't know Chinese, you know.. but they were smiling and taking a lot of pictures with a lot of peace signs. From there we went to a peasant's house and had a meal cooked for us. It was very good. The food here is nothing like I expected. I expected some resemblance to chinese food in America, but it is completely different. There are a lot of vegetables with spices I've never tasted. Locus fruit/root, cooked cucumber, many different roots, liver, pig's feet, and many other things I have never heard of. No rice, sweet and sour chicken, or eggrolls. It has taken some adjusting, but I am starting to like it more. Every meal is family style and layed out on a lazy susan. Each person gets a small plate and you take a little at a time. There is always a massive amount of food. For beverages, there is hot tea, beer (pee-jyo), and white rice wine (by-jyo). White rice wine comes in a shot glass and tastes like vodka and rubbing alcohol.. it is not good. Here is a picture of what the table has looked like at every meal.



Here is a picture from Beijing that I wanted to post. We drove by the construction for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing and it was incredible. Here is the arena-like structure called the "bird's nest." It was huge.



And now I leave you with this.. me trying to play this really hard chinese game of balancing and throwing this little ball.