Longdong isn't too bad

你们好！Nimen hao! I'm sitting in a coffee shop called Tous Les Jours with a friend in the west side of Beijing, Wudaokou. It's a student area with lots of universities, coffee shops, etc. I'm doing great!

I have Chinese class at a language school on Mondays and Wednesdays from 7-9pm. I have 2 classmates - an Italian guy and a French guy... very interesting. The class is too easy for me so I feel very smart. It's good for me to review words and grammar I've forgotten, and some of the vocab words are new so that's good. Chinese class is me in my element - If I could make a career out of attending Chinese class I would rock at it.

I have some interviews/teaching demos for teaching jobs coming up. Some for kindergartners, one for adults. Should be interesting. I'm not excited about doing the demos, but I'm ready to have a job! The kids teaching jobs won't start until March 1st because Chinese New Year (Spring Festival, chunjie) is coming up and people get a long break. Sooo, I'd have a month to hang out, maybe travel a little?!? I need to find some friends to travel with.

The apartment search is ongoing. I love Sheila, the girl I'm going to live with, but so far we haven't found a place we are "manyi" (satisfied) with. People post apartments on this website that look nice and are reasonably priced, but they don't actually exist which is disappointing. We're going to keep looking. The other night we met some real estate guys, who we thought were picking us up in a car, but they showed up with electric bikes. A minute later I'm on the back of a bike, holding on to a Chinese man for dear life as he swerves through cars down the busy streets. I took a picture of it that I'll try to post later. It was fun and crazy!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to run the Great Wall half marathon in May. Ahh!!!! It's going to be impossible, but It also looks incredible and I feel like it's something I have to do. I'm going to try and start training in February. Anyone want to come run it with me?

That's all for now!