Quick Update

My parents just arrived in Beijing for a 10-day Christmas holiday, so the next couple days might be fairly blog-less, just fyi.  Today we went to the Forbidden City, Tianenmen Square, and Wangfujing street where everyone was shocked at the grossness of the food on offer, including snakes, tiny squid, sea urchins, and seahorses.  I think the most shocking thing of the day for my mom though was the baby split pants - babies here wear pants with a hole on the butt so they can pee and poop at will, which they do pretty much anywhere, including grocery store floors.  I don't understand how this is compatible with being held by adults, but hey, it must because I don't think people would stand for constant soiling of their clothes.  I've heard Chinese babies are potty-trained at an insanely early age!  We have a full range of activities and sightseeing lined up for the next few days, including a trip to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors.

 Right before my parents got here, Adam, Alison, and I went on a trip to a 'yearly forum' for all the epidemiology departments affiliated with the Peking Union Medical College.  It was a cross between a farce (sitting in hours of lecture in Chinese when everyone knows we can't understand, plus giving lectures of our own in English that no one understands/cares about) and hilarity (the hotel had hotsprings, bowling, karaeoke, etc) -- please see Adam's blog post about this as we had a hilarious towel adventure that would take too long to relate now. http://faruppereastside.blogspot.com/2010/12/our-trip-tobeijing.html (Thanks Adam!)

And one random picture to share: on the way to CICAMS to go on the trip, I realized that the city government has again decided to tear up my neighborhood for construction...but that doesn't stop the residents from going about their daily business, including shopping for vegetables literally inches away from a trench being dug for pipes!  DIC! (Dude its China!)