Second day of vacation! Even though I went to bed around 2:30 last night, I woke up at 8 feeling refreshed and couldn't fall back asleep. Did some work on my computer for a while before meeting up with Chelsea to go to the noodle shop down the street to get lunch. They have really good food there!

After lunch, we headed back to the dorms to relax for a little and plan what to do for the day. We were originally planning to go see some sights around Beijing, but since today is the Mid Autumn Festival and tomorrow is National Day, we decided against it. We headed over to Cafe Paradiso, which is a coffee cafe on campus and did homework for a little bit. Then we went to the cafeteria next door to grab some mooncakes and dinner. The mooncakes were a little stale, but they still tasted great. Headed back to the dorms to relax for a little while. I was pretty bored....didn't quite know what to do with myself. After a while Chelsea and I got together and started trying to figure out what to do since my options were fix my boredom or go to sleep. We ended up texting a Chinese friend we had made while playing basketball and he invited us to go with him to a bar in Wudaokou. We met him at the gate of BeiDa and had quite a hard time trying to flag a cab. We manage to call a cab, but he refused us when we asked to go to Wudaokou. Cabs typically don't like to drive between BeiDa and Wudaokou since they aren't far apart. So we ended up walking to that district. It was about a 2 km walk, so it wasn't too bad. We tried to go to a few clubs, but all of them were full with people celebrating the holiday, so we walked a little further down the street and found a small bar to hang out at.

We decided to sit outside and ordered our first round of drinks. I didn't know what to get so our friend, 海波，ordered me a mojito to try. I thought it was ok. Chelsea and I didn't really know what to talk about to him with our limited Chinese. It was quite a challenge for both of us. Her listening is a lot better than mine, so she was able to understand him better. Thankfully, he didn't have a Beijing accent. I could understand in general what he was saying, but not specifics. It was a little frustrating. Chelsea talked me into pulling out my handy deck of cards and showing him my magic tricks. He really liked them and wanted me to teach him how to do them. I felt accomplished that I was able to pull off the tricks only using Chinese, although I still have to figure out how to tell people I'm going to make their card appear at the top of the deck in Chinese. Him and I both like Texas Hold'em poker, so we ended up teaching Chelsea how to play and played a few rounds. Sadly, I lost so I had to buy the second round of drinks (he insisted on paying for the first round). All in all, it was a very interesting night, though a little frustrating trying to fumble with Chinese. He's a really nice guy and was very patient and willing to let us puzzle out how to say things in Chinese, which I really appreciate. I'm glad I made a friend who is that patient. A lot of people here just like to switch to English is your Chinese is not very good. I think out of the few hours we were talking to him, I got some good practice in and I feel like I'm starting to improve.

After a few hours, it started to get really cold, so around 1, we decided to finish our drinks and head back to the campus. We managed to catch a cab that wasn't refusing to use its meter and came back to the global village.  I didnt realize how cold it gets around here -- wish I would have brought a jacket along with me! I was definitely shivering by the end of the night.  Trying to set up a karaoke night with 海波 in the future. I can't wait to try karaoke in China!  Time for me to get some sleep so I'm ready for another day of fun and adventure!! Also, I had my first Budweiser in China! Much better than the Tsingtao and Yangjing that everyone else drinks. That stuff is too sweet for me! I missed drinking Bud!