All settled into the new hotel today. Said goodbye to Qinghua and Wudaokou; probably won’t be back for a while. Sold my bike and moved out relatively without incident — except that somebody stole the pot to our hot water heater, which sucked. Like, it absolutely had to have been stolen. Weird situation. Anyway we’re in the exact opposite end of town now, in southeast beijing. Gotta go northwest again tomorrow to do some internship stuff that I should have resolved when I lived ten minutes away, but I’m stupid, so now I get the privilege of spending most of my day subwaying around.
So far as the hotel goes, checking in was a pain in the ass because it always is, but now that we’re here the place is pretty nice, especially considering it’s only 11 usd a night. Hot water at any hour is always a plus. Lack of internet that actually works well is a bit of a minus. Won’t even load my blog properly without me waiting for like half an hour so posts might be a little slower coming these days. I’ll write stuff down on notepad though, and maybe publish everything when i get home.
Dan and i had a really interesting conversation at dinner today with a woman who took pity on us when we were trying to order food. Not that there should have been a problem in the first place — the dish explicitly came with vegetables and rice, but the fuwuyuan felt the need to double check that we really actually wanted rice or something, and it got really confusing. Anywho we talked about the chinese government, tibet, mao, perceptions of homosexuality, all sorts of fun stuff. Apparently it’s cool for guys to hold hands here but not cool for them to share a hotel room, so everybody thinks Dan and I are gay. As if we’re not getting stared at enough already, because there are no other foreigners around here, and we stick out rather severely. Apparently Chinese dudes traveling together will always get two rooms, even if there are twin beds in the room, to avoid coming across as gay. Seems like a waste of 22 bucks to me.
Also, I apparently look british? And strict? Chinese people are strange. Nobody in the restaurant pegged me as american though, which I guess i’m cool for the time being; there are certainly worse things than being taken for a brit. Alright it’s late and i gotta be up early tomorrow, so i’ma cut this one short.

Starting to miss america a little to be honest. Home before too long though; this last week really has flown by.

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