track our trek

we decided to extend our stay at the hostel in beijing to try to wait out the holiday travelers before making our next move. five days in beijing and we are not getting any more comfortable with the spitting...daryll spent one day resting and battling a cold & we spent another day checking out the summer palace (the enormous estate the emperor built for summers.) it was neat to see the complex (again too big for us to see it all) including the 3-story wooden theater complete w/ mini performances! the air quality in beijing is terrible! after almost a week, we could almost understand the spitting! the pollution from coal burning gets in your throat and lungs and just stays there. blech...but in spite of the filth, we grew a little fond of our little hutong...in 5 nights, we had dinner at several different spots and had roasted eggplant about 4 different ways....always delicious! english menus are hard to come by, and when you find them, they often have things like "swimming sacrificed barking meat in casserole"...you can see why we stuck to the vegetarian dishes and lamb at a couple moslem joints. the food was yummy and ridiculously cheap for a ton of food! (21yuan for fried lamb w/ ginger, roasted eggplant, rice, and a pint of beer! that's less than $3US!!) btw, i'm quite proud to announce i'm actually growing to like beer! it tends to be cheaper than water and soda in restaurants, and since tap water is out of the question, it's good i'm developing a taste for it now. lol!