Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Three Weeks Left

Lab work this week has not been too eventful. I set up a couple more experiments, but mostly ran HPLCs and GCs. Sun Jiying is leaving on Saturday to attend a meeting out of town with Professor Liu and two other grad students. Because she has to make a poster to present at the conference, I had yesterday off and will have tomorrow off as well. The conference goes through Wednesday of next week but she has to attend an HPLC operation training session of sorts when she returns, so I will have all of next week off as well.

I'm not entirely sure what I will do with my time at this point. Traveling to a different part of the country would probably be cool, but I don't think it would be feasible because I have to save money for school in the fall and getting around by myself would obviously be challenging since I don't speak Chinese. I'll probably end up staying in Beijing and maybe visiting the labs other students are working in and working on my poster.

I think I've discovered my favorite things in Beijing. First of all, corn on the cob. You can get it covered in a spicy sauce at some stands and it's soooo good. Its texture is slightly different from the stuff we have in the states, though, so not everyone likes it. Secondly (actually I may like this more than the corn) is this little painting shop on what we call the cultural street. I don't know how to describe exactly where it is other than near the Hepingman subway station and famous Peking duck restaurant. In the upper story of the shop, an older Chinese man paints simple nature scenes on scrolls, fans, and papers to be framed. There are all sorts of different sizes and all sorts of different pictures ranging from flowers to animals to scenery. He always writes a little note about the scene off to the side of the picture and signs his name and stamps the painting. His wife stays on the lower floor, directing customers and basically running the business.

I've been there three times already and am planning to go back again this weekend. The last time his wife saw us coming (Allison and I were sprinting because we were afraid the shop would be closed- we got there at 7 and as it turned out it closes at 7:30), she waved and laughed at us and brought us to stools to sit on and ice cream to munch on while we waited for Marko. I bought a big scroll that I have originally come back to get along with a medium sized one that I had not originally come back to get and then ended up buying two other paintings while we were waiting. Each time I brought something new up to the counter to buy, she would just laugh at me because she knows I love everything so much and can't stop buying things. I've definitely spent over 1,000 yuan there already.. I want to take pictures with them and their shop this weekend, so hopefully I will figure out how to post those at some point.

So that is pretty much my new favorite hangout. In other news, Melody will be missing in action for the next week. She's gone to the beach today with her group for a couple of days and will be traveling to the Hunan province with them once they return. Which is really cool for her. I'm jealous.

That may be about all. We will have to see how my next week of vacation goes..

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