Sick of my international travel horror stories? Good, me too. So I won't tell you about the Big Fog in Beijing that canceled over 200 flights and delayed mine until 3:00 in the morning. Nor will I bring up that I stayed up the night before leaving, so by the time I got to Hangzhou on Thursday morning (China time) I had not slept since Sunday night. No, I won't mention any of that.

Above is me and my new roommate, 卢赛喜 (Lu Sai Xi). He is an applied chemistry graduate student from southern Zhe Jiang province. I knew things would be good when I woke him up at 6:00 am to let me in the dorm and he could smile. As for my generally scalding re-entry into China, things are going pretty well. Classes start Monday, and I am hoping that I won't instantly be reduced to tears, ala my previous start of classes. Of course, it's probably best to count on the worst. Then nothing can go wrong.

I hate rollercoasters. You can ask my College Prep Program students whether or not I chickened out from riding on Batman. Definitely did. The whole thing with rollercoasters, generally speaking, is that they are Instant Consquence Decisions. One sees a rollercoaster, is then pressured until he breaks, and finally sees his whole life pass before his eyes with every single click-clack of the elevator chain. The whole terrible process is over in maybe 10 minutes and the victim swears of all ICD for the next 23 seconds.

This is to be compared with Delayed Consequence Decisions. These DCD move through stages. First, some sort of exciting or seemingly innocuous decision is made.

*"We're getting married!"
*"Let's adopt that puppy"
*"Going to China sounds important..."

Then numerous binding agreements are signed, triplicated, sent to government agencies where they're triplicated again. Promises are made to friends and family alike. Thousands of dollars are often spent. Finally, one realizes that the C of his DCD is about to happen and that it's not exciting at all, but rather executing and he is strapped to a huge rollercoaster that instead of being over in 10 minutes will affect the rest of his life and probably kill him first.

Great.

This is the part where I start realizing that I am standing in line again and where I look up to the top of the coaster and I can't see it. It's up in the clouds, beyond anything I could ever predict. The difference with Michael version 2 is that I have ridden this coaster, or its variant, once before. And that if I am not dead yet, it probably won't happen for a while.

Above: My favorite place to ice skate, Bei Da (Beijing University)

Do you wish there was more time in the day? I don't. My recent Friday was 36 hours long. How? Well if you get up at 5:00am China Standard Time, and fly to America and go to bed at 1:00am Central Standard time, that is the same as getting up at 3pm Thursday in Chicago and staying up until 1:00 am Saturday morning. So no, I am not in the market for longer days.

All done with my 4 week stint in Beijing, and I am thankful to have attended. If I had not, I would still be at home simultaneously forgetting Chinese (not hard) and dreading a return to China. Instead I now can sort of read newspapers and I am excited to return to Hangzhou for the next quarter.

Three things I'll miss from Beijing

1. Ice skating on the pond at Beijing University
2. Tang Huo Luo--basically a candied fruit-kabob
3. Time to go out and explore the city with little pressure
   

Reverse Auction. Possibly the most effective sales method I have ever seen, not to mention my favorite. How's it work? A pair of men setup a shop in an alleyway (Hu Tong) and equip themselves with a loudspeaker and two wooden mallets. Big ones. Whatever merchandise is being sold is presented to the crowd and placed on a table. The following conversation ensues:

• "Everyone! This stone lion is beautiful! Give it to a friend! Put it in your house! Should be 800 kuai!

WHAM!

• My friend he's crazy! 500 kuai!

WHAM!

• No way! I say 300!

And down the price goes until someone someone decides that yes, 80 kuai does satisfy his need for a decorative pig. (It's the year of the Pig.) Unfortunately, there is a limit on the price and if nobody wants it, the item is simply returned to the shelf and replaced with a new, probably jade, object.