Updated Links

Caroline and I are featured on GT's athletics website (www.ramblinwreck.com)!! We are submitting journal entries and pictures to them about our travels this summer! How fun! Check it out! A more detailed link is posted in the "Fun Links" column on the left of this page.

Also, I've posted some direct links to my photo albums since I cannot access my Photo Website in China. I am also not able to upload photos anymore due to Internet restrictions, so this is all I've got until I get back to the States in August. Enjoy!

Caroline and I went back to the pool today with our Teaching Assistant Ralph to be our translator. We passed our deep water test (YAY! 30 seconds of treading water and a 200 meter swim), and we got our updated swimming certificate. The people at the pool were FASCINATED by Caroline and I, it was crazy! We were watched the whole time, and people were giving us thumbs up. Ralph informed me that everyone was talking about us and that we looked like professionals. One guy even asked Caroline and I to do a lap of butterfly, and he said that the Tsinghua swim team is far behind us. haha.

I asked Ralph why so many of the Chinese go to the pool, and he said it's because they don't have air conditioning because it is too expensive. So they go to the pool during the day to cool off. Oh and the showers at the pool are COLD. No hot water. And the lap pool is nice, but it's dirty and murky. I'm afraid I'm going to get sick from swimming in the water, but swimming felt SO GOOD! I swam a 1500 (the pool closes at 5 and we get out of class at 4. It was 4:30 by the time we finished our swimming test). Swimming was tough, and I was definitely out of breath, partly because I haven't swam in a month and party because there is no oxygen in China.

Oh, and Caroline and I went back to the Silk Market after swimming, and one of the ladies asked if we were athletes. We said yes, and then she asked if we were swimmers, and she was so excited that she had guessed correctly!

One thing to note about China: there is no shame. Mothers breast feed their children on crowded subways, little children walk around with no pants or underwear on, and when a child has to go to the bathroom, the mother stops them right where they are and let's the child pee on the ground. Yes, I've seen my fair share of children peeing in the corner of a store or in the subway tunnels or even by the escalator. No wonder everybody was sitting on newspaper at the train station...