one big party

Thinking back, thinking back.

Ok, last weekend was a blast. An absolute blast. Friday I discovered spur of the moment and completely randomly that Battles, an American experimental math rock band I love, was playing in Beijing that night. Ten minutes later I was in a cab with Kara, Lara and Bailey. They were
completely awesome. It was a relatively small venue, called Mao's Live House. The best part of the night was possibly the drunk Spanish guy who grabbed my friend's ass, started cussing us out in Spanish and then almost got maced in the face by Bailey (thank god she didnt, it was way too small and crowded of an area for that to have ended well). Lara bitched him out pretty bad too, and i was pretty convinced she was gonna punch him in the face. Very entertaining.

Saturday was the Yen White Party hosted by the club White Rabbit. I'll get pics up when Lara posts them. Another great night, everyone wore white and danced all night. Me and Lara matched outfits (again, ill wait for pics rather than describe it, but it was pretty awesome).

Then the week went by pretty uneventfully. Monday (i think?) we went to Chaoyang and found a place to go tanning. First time i've used a tanning bed, and it was great. I felt like it was the first time i've actually been really warm since i got here. Wednesday was pub quiz, this week lacking in strange conversations with bizarre Chinese men. Still fun though. Lara and I are trying to spend less money by not going to Wudaokou (Lush, La Bamba, Propoganda, Pyro) and Sanlitun (super bar street; cheers, mix, etc) all the time.

Yesterday after classes we went to the zoo! And the aquarium. 120 kuai for both, including the panda house wasn't too bad. The zoo wasn't great, but wasn't bad either. Some of the enclosures were small compared to zoos in the US, but nothing crazy. Jenna, Lara, and I bought blow up animal toys in order to draw even more attention. Nothing new there, being white draws enough attention. By the time we got to the aquarium we had already missed all the marine mammal shows, so we didn't get to see a lot of the main attractions. There was still some really neat stuff. I was surprised to see that in the gift shops and snack stalls all around the zoo and aquarium, there was nothing saying Beijing Zoo or Aquarium. No tshirts, magnets, hats, snowglobes, keychains, nothing! Poor marketing move as far as tourism I think, but they had plenty of other irrelevent and strange crap. Last night we stayed in and watched the Thief and the Cobbler, and Across the Universe with Taryn. It was a nice night.

Today I have got to mail some postcards, drop off my laundry and clean my mess of a room. Also work on a philosophy paper. Arg. If anyone wants a postcard leave me your address in a comment.