China is a fantastic country, and I am sure I have only seen and experienced the tip of the iceberg. I stayed in large cities this time. For my next trip, I will venture deep into the country for a joy ride across nature and into local culture. I will want to pick a partner who also speaks some Mandarin so that the language strain equalizes across two people rather than one. If I am the only one who speaks Mandarin, that could lead to a dependence that might bring me or that other person down. I want to see the spiked hills or mountains, the vegetation of different regions, and feel the pace of life elsewhere.

I got a taste, and now I am hungry.

Ben had jury duty yesterday so Mariana picked me up from SFO. She had a bit of coffee in hand and it was oh so tasty! It felt like a swift change from Mandarin to Spanish. I introduced her to Mitch and then we were on our way.

We picked up Ben, who looked so handsome, from home and made use of his lunch break. A taco. Moving into a new cuisine quickly. It felt odd that the top choices were not Chinese food. I will find lotus root today.

I managed to stay up until something like 8PM and then crashed. Woke up at 0220 and it is now 04:10.

I am wondering about breakfast and will try to roll over and get some sleep for a while.

Sometimes, ya just wake up the next day and feel like smiling. Today is the first glimps of solitude that I have had for a while now and I am soaking it in. I made a wise decision to opt for a hotel room by myself for the last part of my trip. Makes all the difference in the world.

Today feels like a day of mental saturation. I could go out and find something to do, such as hear live music in one of the alley's bars and maybe do a little dancing. Somehow my little dance flare is barely lit tonight or at least at the moment.

If I wander out on the street, something fun might happen. My current thoughts involve fighting my tendency to stay inside even though I know the outside world is okay.

At the moment, I am feeling a little like cutting the trip short. It's likely a small bit of PMS kicking in. Hormones are overrated. Maybe I will rent a bike and vroom around that way for a while. Walking takes too long because this city is huge. For some reason, Beijing is a "square" yet less easy to navigate than Shanghai for some reason. In Shanghai, I felt like I had a better idea of how to get around. Perhaps it is because here in Beijing we started out in a hutong here where you can very easily get lost, which I have done a number of times.

I think I might head back to the park and see some nature for a while. Last night, I had an American meal and it did not feel good to eat it. It was expensive, far too large, and I ended up throwing at least half of it away. There are very few homeless people in China from what we see in the big cities, so handing the left-overs to a bum as I do in San Francisco was not an option. It was so wasteful and unsatisfying. Also, the waiters in the joint have been trained by a New York boss to up-sell, which I find highly annoying.

Normally, the Chinese simply wait for you to make a decision about what to order and it doesn't really matter how long it takes you; they will continue to "breath over your shoulder" until you are ready to order. Somehow I prefer that than someone interrupting your thought process by injecting yet another purchasing decision at a higher price. All about the money and eating a dollar over eating food.