Finally Friday! I’ve been so tired this week, I was looking forward to the weekend. The pollution today was horrible. I forgot to close my window last night so I woke up with a sore throat from breathing in too much smog….not fun. Had 2 classes today and got assigned a ton of homework for the weekend. Not looking forward to doing all that. I was supposed to go with my classmates to check out the Lama Temple, but I had such a headache that I had to go home and lay down instead. After taking a nap, I felt much better and went back to campus to grab some lunch. Met up with someone I recently met and chatted for a little. He’s a masters student at Beijing Sports University and he comes to Beida to teach dancing classes. So after talking for a while, he said he had to go teach his class and invited me along. I had nothing better to do, so I figured I would check it out. It was an interesting experience. I could tell the other students there didn’t know what quite to make of me, being a foreigner not to mention arriving at the class with the teacher. I definitely got a lot of looks and some of the guys were actually arguing over who’s dance partner I could be haha. I’m pretty sure random foreigners don’t typically appear in their class. The guy I went with (who taught the class) turned out to be an amazing dancer. The first 90 minutes of the class was ballroom dancing and the second half was more like a salsa style. I had a lot of fun, even if I’m not that great at dancing. He invited me to come back tomorrow morning for another dance class…I guess he teaches them several times a week at Beida. If I wake up early enough, I might give it a try. It’s fun and it’s also a good way to meet people. Although the class was pretty difficult since it was taught only in Chinese. I had an idea of what was going on, but not much. I felt bad for the guy I was dancing with…he kept trying to explain things to me and I only understood a little more than half of what he said. At least the people were patient and willing to wait for me to understand what they were saying. Once the other students realized I could speak Chinese, they were a lot more talkative. I asked one of my other Chinese friends about that and they said most Chinese people think foreigners are on vacation in China and therefore, can’t speak the language. I guess that could be true in most cases. Just means that if I want to meet people, I guess I’ll have to make the first move since the sterotype seems to be the foreigners can’t speak Chinese. Well that’s all for today. I’m staying in tonight. My classmates are going to a Halloween party in Saniltun, but it’s way too expensive for me. Just to get in the door is 100 kuai ($16USD) per person. Plus I don’t have a Halloween costume. I have a lot of homework, so I figure I’ll get that done tonight, go to sleep early and wake up tomorrow hopefully feeling well rested. The homestay family seems surprised that I’m not going out tonight haha. Still having mixed feelings about the homestay. Tomorrow, planning to go to dancing class and then hopefully shopping in Xidan to buy a few things. Also my classmate introduced me to taobao, which is the Chinese form of ebay. I think I might be buying some clothing off there in the future…it’s super cheap and I really like some of the stuff! Also trying to set up a gig tutoring English for 2 hours on Sunday mornings. I hope it works out! The pay is $25USD an hour! Maybe I should give up being and Engineer and come to China to teach English hahaha!