The End

What a melodramatic title. Anyways, yes, we are at the end of our stay in Beijing.

The last few days have been rather low-key. Despite our grand plans to make the most of the remainder of our time here, we have lapsed into much laziness, assisted by the apocalyptic weather conditions. (Yesterday Rozi and Helen and I literally waded through water that was up to six inches deep, just to get to the convenience store that is right by our dorms.) We've watched an extraordinary number of movies and not done much else. It's great.

Now I'm packing and I am not having much difficulty with luggage space limitations, because I've thrown out a good amount of clothing that has been ruined thanks to being washed in China water. I might have to throw out my Cal hat too, even though it has served me faithfully in China, because it got destroyed by Inner Mongolian duststorms and Beijing acid rain. The clothes I'm not that sad about because that means I get to do lots of shopping when I get back, and the hat, well, I am kind of sad but I think my Stanford friends will be happy to see it go. Hm - maybe it is salvageable? I'll try to wash it when I get back...

We're supposed to move out of our dorms today, but our flight isn't until tomorrow morning, so we'll be having a sleepover in the lounge. Shen Laoshi was kind enough to give us the key to the bathroom upstairs too (we normally have to go back to our rooms to use the bathroom.. very inconvenient) so the accommodations will be good. Hooray for a sleepover and more movies and not sleeping much and preemptively correcting jetlag!