We had another lovely Saturday in Beijing.  We had heard that the Embassy area of town was quite nice -- and that there were sports bars there that might show American football!  So, we ventured out to track down a place we can possibly watch the OU-Texas game (at 3:00am!) in a few weeks.  We knew that Ritan Park was in the Embassy region, so the taxi driver dropped us there and we explored the park for a while.  It was really a lovely place -- rather small and quaint with lots of families out and about for the weekend.  You can see a few photos of the park in the slide show below.  Be sure and notice the smog!  I cannot describe to you the dirty air in Beijing -- but perhaps you can get some idea by trying to find the buildings in the distance in the photos from the Circle Altar at the park.  You will also notice that Pat (well, and Suzette too) enjoyed some wonderful German beer -- and food -- at the Biergarten at Ritan Park.  It was honestly the best food and beer we have had since coming to China!!  Hannah loved it so much she asked if we can have her birthday dinner there!  No problem!!

After a stroll through the park and a lovely lunch at the Biergarten, we wandered the rest of the Embassy area and decided that we live and work  in 3rd world Beijing while all the Embassy folks live and work in 1st world Beijing.  That part of town is SO much more clean and orderly!  So, we enjoyed it for a while -- visiting the various art galleries and souvenir shops, and finding the BBQ restaurant that is photographed (appropriately upside down) above (we'll visit that place sometime soon just to see what BBQ in Beijing will taste like!).  Then we cabbed  it back to our dumpy, yet homey, part of town.

All in all, we had some great food this weekend, actually.  Friday night we went to a pizza place called the Kro's Nest.  It is owned by a guy from Atlanta and managed by a lovely lady from San Francisco.  The pizza and calzone were awesome!!  And they have cheap Guiness, so I was happy!

As for the rest of the week, we had our first experience with managing the city of Beijing in the rain.  Not fun.  In the nearly 6 weeks I have been here, it had rained only once -- one evening for about 15 minutes.  This week we had 2 days of rain and you can just imagine what that does to traffic and maneuvering an already crowded city.  We learned that finding a taxi in the rain is nearly impossible -- and that it takes forever to walk somewhere in the rain because you can't walk in a sraight line, you have to zig-zag while dodging all the massive puddles and pools of water that accumulate all over the uneven and jagged sidewalks and roads.  Loads of fun.  We did have one extremely frustrating experience on the way to Hannah's school on Thursday.  It was raining pretty heavily and we could not find a taxi near our house, so we began walking toward school and were just resigned to being late when we spotted an empty taxi sitting right on the corner about 1/2 mile from school.  We were quite excited and climbed in just as another family from Hannah's school came up and asked if we could take their girls with us (the two girls have a German Dad and Chinese Mom -- and the oldest girl is actually in Hannah's class, so they recognized us and asked if the girls could ride along due to the weather).  I climbed in front and the 3 girls are in back -- I told the driver where we were going, pointing to the street to the right that he needed to take just as the girls' mothers told the driver, in Chinese of course, where we were going.  The doors closed and we took off and the taxi driver missed the turn!!!!  I don't know what the heck he was thinking, but he drove right by the street we had told him about and pointed at!  Needless to say, we were then doomed to 25 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic as he had to take us about 3 miles out of our way to get back around to the school!!!  Well, you can imagine, I was furious and proceeded to give the guy a piece of my mind -- all in English with a few choice Chinese words thrown in -- but I think he got the picture.  We were then terribly late for school -- and here I am with these two little girls who don't even know us (and they speak only Chinese and German!) -- and their parents had to have seen the taxi driver miss the turn and just freak out!  So, when we finally arrived at the school, I told the girls to get out and then I leaned in and told the driver I would not be paying him for that ridiculous adventure and slammed the door.  I then escorted the girls up to the school, waited a few minutes trying to decide how I was going to get to the office (I had a seminar that morning and was indeed in a suit that was now soaking wet!).  I decided to go ahead and walk the remaining 15 minutes to Beida and took off, only to find the taxi driver still waiting for me and motioning that he wants his money.  I marched over to the car and told him the best I could that I would not be paying him -- that he missed his turn after getting perfectly clear directions and made us very late, which was unacceptable.  I half expected him to jump out and tackle me -- and half expected to see him show up at school the next day looking for me -- but so far, so good.  When I told the girls' parents what happened (I saw them that afternoon), they couldn't believe the driver had done what he had done, but also couldn't believe I didn't pay him.  I guess that's a major boo-boo?  Oh well!

Other than that excitement, we had a nice week and are looking forward to another.  The temperatures have cooled off a little here, but hopefully we will steer clear of too much rain.  Next weekend we are going to the Great Wall, so we are really looking forward to that!!  But, we'll be in touch before then to keep you up to date on what's going on.  Talk to you soon!