a chinese sunday afternoon

for various reasons, studying in beijing means being in a state of perpetual exhaustion. i think my closest friends on the trip and i all went to sleep at about 9p last night and slept 13-14 hours each. this afternoon we went to "Panjiayuan" which is an enormous flea market filled Mao-memorabilia and dubiously "ancient" pieces of art. most of us didn't buy much - i think we mainly wanted to hone our haggling skills and people watch a little. we took a rather long taxi back (maybe about the length of a 40-50 dollar taxi in America) and i think i had my best Chinese speaking experience. The cab driver and I talked about the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the respective GDP's and populations of America and China, the difficulties of studying English and Chinese, and even American politics (the driver was particularly fond of Hillary Clinton or, in Chinese, He-La-Li.