What I've Been Doing

...so posting regularly has been a little more difficult than I anticipated.  In an attempt to pack light, we decided to bring one laptop on the trip, which, at the time, seemed like a great idea.  Since we arrived though, I've been taking two online classes, my husband's been able to get in a few hours of work online, AND he ended up translating two articles within about a week.  In other words, when we're home, someone is ALWAYS on the computer!

While I have a longer post in the works, I thought it might be interesting to let everyone in on what we've been doing over here.

For most of this trip, we are staying with friends in Beijing who have a spare room in their apartment and are generous enough to let us use it.  Our temporary home is on the way, WAY north side of the city.  Find the Olympic Stadium on a map of Beijing.  That's north, right?  Now go further, almost to the end of the subway lines.  That's us! 

As a result of our location, a typical day involves a lot of time devoted solely to travel.  Today, we made an entire 10 hour day out of a lunch date and a short interview.  Yup, that's Beijing.

On a typical day, we wake up, check email, Skype with our parents, and catch up on the news (for one us, this means checking in to see if the NBA's on).  If needed, I do a little work for my classes or my husband does a little work on the computer.  We have breakfast with those little packets of instant Nescafe, as coffee hasn't really caught on in our neighborhood yet (there is a Starbucks and a McDonald's about a 40 minute walk away though, so my addiction is still going strong) and get ready for the day.

Most days center around interviews or meetings with old friends/ professors of my husband's.  Both usually involve lunch...and are held somewhere at least an hour away from us.  The rest of the morning is devoted to walking/riding the subway.  On one hand, it's a bit of a pain in the ass to travel all around the city everyday.  On the other hand, it's awesome because I'm walking about 10 miles a day, and can therefore eat all the rice, noodles, and ice cream I want.  It's not a bad trade. 

Sometime in the afternoon, we usually realize that we need real coffee, and so we'll head off to the nearest coffee shop to get our fix, write up notes (him), and practice language (me).  If we don't have anything scheduled for the day (which has been rare this trip), we go out and do something touristy (we just saw a pretty sweet exhibit at the National Museum) or he works while I go do a little shopping.  We usually have dinner wherever we end up to avoid rush hour, and in the evenings, it's more homework, language study, and tv.  It doesn't sound that exciting when I type it all out, but this is what a research trip is like.  

And now for some pictures:

I swear, we live on the most crowded subway line ever.  This is a slow time of day.

I caught a blue sky over our neighborhood!

 The entrance to our neighborhood (population 300,000 and growing strong) at night, courtesy of the husband.

Field trip day at Tiananmen, also courtesy of the husband

...and now it's time to share the computer again.  ;-)