Snakes in Beijing

Wow! I'm happy today. The conference was as ridiculous as ever. I don't think that I gained anything from the talks today, but chatting with various colleagues in the breaks was certainly very useful. At lunch time I ambled around the lakes on the Peking university campus and took photos of frogs.

I decided to spend the evening alone and just walked for a few kilometres from the hotel. It was wonderful. I kept stopping to buy various filled buns and other foods from street vendors (I've got some medication standing by - just in case, but haven't needed it yet) and just walked and walked and walked. I went through a street market where everything was being sold. I stopped to watch an old man sitting on the street with various boxes and jars. A huge heap of pretty girls were looking in one cardboard box and going all gooey over his baby rabbits that he was trying to sell. While this was happening, I noticed a thin, but long (and absolutely beautiful) green snake slowly unravel itself out of a jam jar and head off over the pavement to the box full of rabbits. The girls didn't like the snake! :)

What else! After stuffing myself with the buns I decided that I'd better eat even more. The smell of the food is incredible. So I found myself a restaurant and went in. I got laughed at. My entire Chinese consists of saying "1 bottle of beer" (which I said on numerous occasions) and "dumplings". The waitress seemed to think that this wasn't enough. I tried to mime that I wanted some rice ('mifan' - I'll remember this now), but didn't get very far. I also tried to mime "lamb" and only got a laugh. However, I did get the most amazing food which was enough for about 5 people and cost about 12 Australian dollars. By this point I was completely stuffed and had drunk a few too many "1 bottle of beer". So I decided to walk off the food and drink by going in the opposite direction. Amazingly I didn't get lost :) The weather was perfect - clear night and probably about 28C. It's wonderful.
Oh, only some of my photos seem to be uploaded. I've no idea what happened to the others. I'll try and find them tomorrow.

Good night.