So, Dan has written about the meat and potatoes of our trip in Harbin, mainly the ice and the snow festival. As the Chinese say, "a picture is worth a thousand words," so you'll have to wait until we upload the pictures to really get a good feel what it was like, but it really was truly amazing. The ice sculptures included everything from large palaces made out of ice, which you could climb up the staircases onto balconies--no going inside unfortunately, they were solid--but there was one building that was a good 5 stories. Of course, climbing to the top meant elbowing your way through the mosh pit of other people, all while climbing up steps carved out of ice. And lets just say there wasn't a handicapped accessible ramp (well, actually there was an enormous, two story slide, but think it was only one way). As for mosh pits, Dan's description of getting on the snow pull barely scratches the surface of the true reality: skis became weapons (as well as liabilities, as you could find your self stuck into place by 5 other people standing on your skis) and I'm surprised no one lost any eyes from the flailing ski poles. After one go through the line, in which I luckily got shoved to the front by a well meaning teenage boy, we found it faster to snow plow up the slope with our skis on, and even faster to take them off, walk up, and then put them back on. The slope may have been a bunny slope, but the dozens of people standing or lying in to middle of the slope did kind of create a slolum effect. And after hundreds of skiers going down, the snow was kind of more like a cross between concrete and gravel. However, it was fun and definitely a neat experience. Now at cocktails, I can casually say, "Aspen? Whistler? that's nothing compared to Yabuli, but I suppose that might be above your level." Also, I did not break anything, or get killed by a tree, my two secret fears about downhill skiing.

And now for something completely different. Now that we don't have internet at home, we have two choices: go to an internet cafe, all which seem to have the motto cheap 'n smokey. Though actually, they are really really cheap, only about 18 cents an hour, and they're mainly filled with college students playing video games, watching movies, or talking online. Because the cafes are so cheap, many students just go there to download and watch movies, which is cheaper than buying them on the street, where they cost about a dollar. The other option is to go to a coffee shop, most of which have both computers and wireless access. That does involve buying a 3 dollar cup of coffee, but really, if you're going to drink the coffee anyways, internet is a nice perk. In fact, not having internet or computers in China is much more convenient than in America, probably because so few people do have home computers, but everyone likes to use them, so every corner has an internet cafe, and free wireless access/computers are common in most nicer coffee places. Right now I am at my favorite coffee shop writing this blog. The coffee here is some of the best in Qingdao, the prices are reasonable, and the atmosphere is pleasant. The bad part, (and this is really really bad, kind of on par with all those jokes about where some guy goes to hell and the devil shows him this room and it seems nice and then he says, well, what's the drawback...) is that they play really terrible music all the time. They own about three CDs, the greatest hits of Celine Dion, the Backstreet Boys, and Westlife, this Irish band which is possibly worse than the other two (occasionally they mix it up with equally sacharine Chinese music). Having to listen to Celine Dion once through is bad enough, having to listen to it twice in a row is almost unbearable. And one time, they literally played one song 12 times in one hour, once three times in a row. They also have a large screen where they show music videos. Upstairs doesn't have a big screen, but they do have little flat screen TVs show the videos, and speakers to pipe in the music. I wonder how the employees stand it.