Blue Skies

THE SKY IS BLUE. After two days of rain and clouds, the sky finally cleared to reveal the first blue skies I've seen since arriving in Beijing. The weather is perfect - warm, breezy, and bright. I hope it lasts for a couple days, and the smog stays away, but I'll take what I can get while I can. My friend Kimmi gets so excited over blue skies, so I'm sure when I see her she'll be ecstatic.

Yesterday was the last free day before classes, so some friends and I went to Ikea. It's just like the other Ikeas I've seen, except that everything is in Chinese (besides the usual Swedish). I was tempted to buy everything (Ikea always does that to me), but I limited myself to a quilt cover and pillowcase (36 kuai, or 6 dollars!). Also, there is no tax here. No tax, no tips.

After returning to our dorms and taking a quick break, some friends and I went to find some food. Across the street from the southwest gate, there's a street full of small restaurants and stalls. We found a pretty good place and ordered egglant and green beans, goose (my first), a vegetarian dish for a vegan friend, and crispy pork with bok choy (a popular vegetable here). All in all, we each paid 5 dollars, and we were full. We explored an underground arcade, which was teeming with people (it was in the afternoon on a weekend, so I guess people had free time), then went back to the dorm again. I opted out of going to a hooka bar/Turkish restaurant later because I had unpacking to do and a skype session with my parents, but after that I went with another group to get dinner.

We tried going back to place I went to for lunch, but it was closing so they made us leave. The next place we sat down at only served cold vegetable dishes and fish, which no one was in the mood for, so we left (I felt guilty because we'd already sat down and looked at the menu). The third place was very casual - you just order at the cashier, and they serve it to you. Someone ordered ice tea, and they gave us a huge jug; of course we only drank a third of it.

After that, I showed everyone the arcade place, which was a lot emptier than in the afternoon. We bought some tokens, and some people played a full-body version of the app Fruit Ninja. You basically use your hands/arms to slice fruit that flies across the screen. It's pretty funny to watch the person because it looks like they're flailing. I played a shooting game based on Rambo, then a game that was like DDR except that the arrows were pointing to the corners (instead of front, back, left, and right). Besides the steps, though, you also had to raise your arms (front, back, left, and right). My friend and I picked random Chinese songs but didn't do too well, although we were still better than our other two friends and the two Chinese girls after them. They somehow found English songs, so we told them to pick Mambo Number 5 (too bad I didn't have that option - I actually know the rhythm to that one).

A couple of extra stuff: even when the air isn't humid (because of the rain), a lot of people smoke, and they smoke everywhere. After an hour in the arcade, my hair smelled like smoke. I haven't been taking pictures and everything because I've been taking things in so far, and the more time I'm blogging or going on the internet, the less time I'm actually experiencing China. There's a white cat that lives in the office, but I just saw it for the first time this morning. It wandered around, crying (which reminded me of my own cats), then jumped up on a couch between two people and started grooming, then sleeping. It's adorable. Also, I've noticed that two other people have the same blog theme. I guess that means I should be a hipster and change it.

My interview is at 2 pm, and I think it takes about an hour to get there, so I'm going to get brunch, then come back to do some more interview prep. I'll ask for directions to the place, then change into my business clothes. One problem though: how do I sell my international relations-concentrated self to an an information sharing consulting company?