It's cold!

I'm finally lining my jeans with long underwear, and it's still pretty chilly. But at least it's not raining! It was quite a beautiful morning outside my window today:

Compare to a week ago, when it was still iced over:

It's so cheerful now! But much too cold to use the Pitzer wifi from the office, since you need to go outside for it. I skyped last night nevertheless, at 1am, and in the middle of talking to Connor - I was shivering so badly I couldn't type - two Beida cops came by and tried to get me to tell them why I was using my computer outside and not in my room. I didn't remember how to say "wireless" so I think they left almost as confused as they'd started, but they did get that I didn't have internet in my room and that I was somehow using my program office's internet. Outside. At 1am.

We've also started dressing up in mittens and layers for tai ji, because our badass master isn't going to cut us any slack in the case of freezing weather.

Sniped while he was demonstrating "Right Heel Kick"

Last night was Luisa's birthday! We had a delicious fruity cake in the office at noon, and went out to an awesome Sichuan restaurant for dinner.

Kearney applied her Chinese-class learning and told us not to open the 1 kuai chopsticks, and we asked for the free chopsticks instead.

Baijiu shots, in honor of Luisa's 21st.

The food was full of fiery red peppers, but delicious! That's lotus root above, and fish below. It was so fresh that Abi made friends with it before they dispatched it.

For Valentine's, they had ridiculous numbers of rose-vendors, extremely pushy rose-vendors. They followed us until Luisa caved and bought a rose for 5 kuai.

The sketchy bar we ended up at after bar-hopping and bargaining for ages. Yasi bargained like a champ, but they were determined to rip us off, and did. Assholes.

Whatever. It was fun anyway :) And happy birthday, Luisa! I guess it was one type of a 21st experience.