The last few days have been kind of crazy, I'm losing track of what I've done. Wednesday and Thursday were fairly normal, still lots of eating. On Wednesday night, I went to the Silk Market to bargain shop and came out with a few good deals and a great headache. The sales people here are relentless and will fight to the death for a price, which is so useless because the customer always wins, unless it's an uninformed foreigner I guess. On Thursday night, I caught up with some Beijing relatives and ate more food, of course.

On Friday, I took the train from Beijing to my hometown of Taian to visit my grandmother. You can't book a roundtrip ticket for trains in China and must purchase the ticket in person. When I got to Taian, I stood in line, in the sweltering heat, for 40 minutes to be told that all ticket back to Beijing for the Saturday and Sunday are sold out. I panicked! Luckily, an old friend of my mom's was able to help. Long story short, I got a plane ticket back to Beijing departing from a city 1 1/2 hours from my hometown. It was a rough trek, but I made it back to Beijing on Saturday evening.

Taian is still very behind and has a shit ton of people! I went to the stores to get my grandmother some necessities on Saturday morning and didn't think I'd make it back alive! There was a sea of people everywhere with lots of pushing and shoving, and everyone is used to it. There is no AC inside the stores, which made it even more miserable. I found a grocery store and stood by the frozen food section for a while to cool off. Green lights for pedestrians are just a suggestion as cars charged at me even though I had the right of way.

A dear friend of mine from childhood and her husband visited me at the Jinan airport before I boarded the plane to Beijing. We only had about 40 minutes together but it was so nice to see them!

I'm back in Beijing for Sunday and will head out to Northeast China on Monday morning.`