Another Day in Paradise

Things have been pretty calm around here. I've not been to the lab in a few days since I can only access Insite for my grades during the hours I'm (a) sleeping, (b) in class, or (c) eating and bar hopping. And there hasn't been much other excuse to come here.

FYI all my grades are in, and despite my dismal performance on my Legislation exam, I've actually had the best semester yet and it managed to raise my GPA. A site for sore eyes since the last 3 have chipped away at it little by little. Still wondering what this 5 credit exam is going to do to us since we're not exactly sure we've learned anything testable. It's a little hard to follow and we tend to get conflicting information between the book and the lectures. But somehow we'll figure it out.

K and I have become the most popular backdrop for pictures in China. The other day we visited the Summer Palace and spent some time sitting on a railing by the lake. K was reading and I was people watching through my sunglasses, though I didn't really need the anonymity of those since everyone here stares freely. At one point an older gentleman walked within a foot of me staring, and then hurriedly handed his camera off to his friend to take a picture of him standing in between us. This would have been great and all had the dude actually spoken to us or given us any indication of what he was doing. Instead, as K said, had I not yelled out to her, she still would have been reading her book in this guy's picture.

At another point in the day, we were sitting along rocks on the edge of a path where Beijing Bob suggested that we try to see how many people we could get to fall down the stairs. Unfortunately we were sitting at the flat spot so most people caught themselves before tumbling. K and I are hoping to have a resident student make a sign for us letting people know we will take pictures for a small fee. Might as well make some money for our oddity.