July 7th

Hey everyone that my parents have started forwarding this e-mail to (and Mom, Dad and Bea)! Went to a street market last night in an alleyway and watched a bunch of people from the group eat freshly fried scorpions. I decided against this culinary adventure, but I did have lamb from a street vendor today, it was delicious and fried right in front of me for 5 yuan. A good lunch for less than a dollar! Prices here are all completely insane. I've spent less than 200 yuan since I got here, and that's about thirty dollars. The $800 that I'll be getting per month is going to go a hell of a long way here. Oh, another thing about the market: salespeople are aggressive. I got into a tug of war with my own arm and a woman that really wanted me to buy her trinkets, and at least three other people form my group had the same thing happen throughout the market.

Group morale is low right now. We all start teaching in two days, and nobody is ready for it, myself included. I'm hiding it well, although a few people completely floundered in front of the class. Everyone has assumed that the kids know more English than they do, and it's causing problems. I'm going to adjust my lesson plans accordingly, but I'm worried it won't be enough. I suppose I may have to just wing it, or let them stare dejectedly at their desks as I attempt to explain the Minnesota State Fair. I'm sure I'll come out just fine, and I get to sing El Paso during the opening ceremony. Score! I'm leading the group when we go to Inner Mongolia, so I won't have to teach, but will spend my days coordinating everything. It fills me with a false sense of importance that I find comforting.

Every day I get more and more comfortable with the space that I'm living in. I know how to get around the city fairly well, or at least my neck of the woods, and I've already shed my Minnesotan politeness when going on the subway. I haven't been able to see the sky through the smog since I got here, and it's been sticky humid every day. My skin has never looked better, at least when I'm not sweating buckets. We're going to bar trivia at the same ex-pat bar we went to on the 4th. I think we're going to do pretty well. They fixed our shower head, but I also have to hand wash clothing, which is going to be a trip. I'm going to hang out with Betsy tomorrow, and it's going to be crazy to see a familiar face on the other side of the planet. I'll fire off another e-mail tomorrow, we're traveling on the eighth so I won't be able to send anything.

-Cooper

P.S. Just after I wrote that e-mail last night with every intention of sending it, I discovered that we were all going out for Peking duck as a send off dinner for the summer camp program. Morale improved drastically at that point. We went tot his restaurant, and the waitstaff started bringing out dishes one by one. After four were on the cardinal directions of the table, Logan and I thought that the duck would be the next thing, and that would be that. It was not. Food just kept coming, and every time we thought that we had seen the last dish, another dish was placed at the table. The duck was incredible, and an excellent dinner was had by everyone. After that, we went out to the pub quiz, and proceeded to do really, really well. Our first round was perfect, thanks to Miles's vast stores of knowledge about Disney movies, and we entered the fifth round three points out of first. The problem was, the fifth round was bag of music, and the theme was 90's hip hop. We got crushed, and proceeded to get drunk on 5 yuan beers, gin and tonics, and tequila shots. I'm still completely flabbergasted by prices here, and they'll only get lower when we get to our first camp at Quzhou in Hebei province. I met a couple of students from Austria at the bar, and we debated the potential collapse of the Euro. Thomas Friedman's mustache is tingling right now because of that sentence. Our cab home cost each of us 8 yuan, and let me tell you, a Beijing cab ride is just as crazy as you think it is. We're spending today working on lesson plans, and I get to hang out with Betsy tonight, so I'm excited.