Whether it is because moist air has moved past the Beijing area or because the Chinese authorities decided they had had enough, it has stopped snowing. According to the BBC, our winter wonderland may have been artificially induced by iodide sticks, which can supposedly cause precipitation if fired into the sky. The Chinese authorities wanted to get some snow to fall because Central and northern China have been suffering from a drought for some time now. Here's another picture of the lake that I ride by on my way to class. I took this one the day after the snow stopped.

Now, it's just plain cold. Riding my bike around campus has been quite painful due to the cold, so I went out and bought a pair of gloves at a place called the Silk Street Market. The Silk Street Market is a kind of mall with at least 6 or 7 stories of vendors selling clothes, shoes, hats, jewelry (including pearls, real and fake of course), chop sticks, backpacks, DVD's, and other stuff. Lots of foreigners go there to find things like name brand ski jackets and sunglasses for absurdly low prices. Sometimes you can find something that looks like it actually came from the factory floor. Other times, you can tell that what your looking at is really just a cheap, low quality knock off. The pair of gloves I bought today originally had a price tag of 500 yuan. After about 1 minute of bargaining the price was reduced to 40 yuan ($5.85), which was still probably too much. I've heard that the going rate tends to be no more than 1/10 of the price that the vendors initially demand. I say demand because the vendors can literally be pushy when you start to do business with them. The shop worker I dealt with told me she had to grab me because she didn't want to have to kill me to keep me from walking away. Another one yelled "you want underwear?" at me two or three times as I walked past his stand. But it's not all too scary. In fact, it can be quite a confidence booster. In the course of my conversation with the shop worker that sold me the gloves, she told me that she could sense I have a "strong heart" and that therefore the gloves she had for sale would be a good fit for me. Here's a picture of one of seemingly hundreds of aisles with vendors. I apologize for the blurriness although it actually does more justice to such a dizzying experience.

And here's my bike. Yeah, it's an HYSQ. I've seen some other nice ones around campus, such as the "Forever", the "Soddy", the "Super Classic Bicycle: Fashion", and the "Wolfs" (not a typo there, the model name is plural), but mine gets the job done.

Before going to buy gloves, I stopped off at the Olympic sports center. All of the stadiums are now locked up but that hasn't stopped loads of visitors from coming to the site to walk around and take pictures. As you might guess, the place is huge. Based on the image that Google Maps pulled up, it looks like it's about 4 miles from the south end to the north end of the grounds. That's the Bird's Nest on the right and the Water Cube on the left. And then those are lots of Christmas trees that line the entire span of the walkway. I don't know why they're there.

I took this one on my way to class this morning. Off to the right is Weiming Lake, which sits in the center of campus. Students and visitors come here to walk around, take pictures, and relax. I've been told it rarely snows here. Temperatures, however, typically hover around 20-40 degrees Fahrenheit during the winter.

This is my home stay room. I'll be here for three weeks, after which I'll move into a dorm with the other students in the program.

This is the Forbidden City with Tiananmen Square in the foreground. Admittance is far less strict these days. All you have to do now is buy a ticket; in the old days, the fee was much more serious, especially for males without noble heritage. The characters on the left side of Mao's portrait (中华人民共和国万岁）say "Long live the People's Republic of China". Those on the right （世界人民大团结万岁）say "Long Live the United People of the World".

I arrived in Beijing two Saturdays ago (don't pay attention to the date given for this posting, I think it's off because of the time change) during the finale of the Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival). For the first two nights, I stayed in a hostel just south of Tiananmen Square, which is located in the center of the city. Many celebrated the Spring Festival by constantly setting off fireworks almost everywhere in the city throughout the day and night. I've never witnessed anything like it before. Some celebrations did get out of hand and resulted in a fire that caused irreparable damage to the China Central Television (CCTV) building. After roaming around and dodging firecrackers for a couple of days, I packed up my things and took a taxi to Beijing (or Peking) University. Since then, I've spent most of my time finding my way around the campus of 40,000 students, trying to learn the names of different foods, and stumbling through conversations with my host family. My host parents are in their 60's and have a son who looks like he's in his late 30's or early 40's. They live in an apartment in the northern part of campus (about a 10 minute walk to the center of campus) and the mother was a nurse at the campus hospital and is retired now. I purchased a used bike today, which I'll be using to go to class and to the various cafeterias on campus. Each cafeteria makes one kind of food (noodles, dumplings, soup), all of which is delicious and unbelievably cheap. Tomorrow, class begins.