China Beach

Over Labor Day weekend, we took the opportunity to drive 3 hours to go the beach at Beidaihe. It didn't matter that I was coming down with a cold; we were going. An hour into the drive, Luke threw up in the car. I'm still convinced it was the half chocolate, half peanut-butter-paste oreo he ate. We stayed at a supposedly semi-swank hotel in a suite with 6 single beds. This place was filthy. Even on college road trips, we wouldn't have stayed in a dump like this. To add to the ambiance, they had 3 ostriches inside a large netted-off area. These "birds" looked like something out of the Dark Crystal. At least a third of the feathers had fallen out and they had these enormous tags jutting out of their necks. They made me rethink eating turkey at Thanksgiving.

Despite the lack of Western food and some people's reluctance to eat Chinese food, the worst aspect of the trip was that we never escaped Beijing's cloud of pollution. (I'm probably as sick of writing about it as you are of reading about it - but you don't have to breathe it)First the sky was blocked, now the ocean. You can't see the horizon. Only about 200 yards or so out to sea. Bu hao!