Still alive -- harder than you think

I almost killed someone on the Great Wall in Beijing.



What you can barely hear over the music in the beginning is me saying, "I'm scared." The steps are of uneven height and the incline is ridiculously high. I put my water bottle in my bag so that I could hold onto the railing and take what I thought was going to be standard footage. When my arm squeezed against my bag, my water bottle got pushed out. There were a couple things to note from that footage: 1. The guy was really cool about almost dying. 2. Woody's first reaction was to laugh at the guy 3. I kept the camera rolling the whole time. Wow.

Number 1 and 2 lead me to believe it wasn't that serious, but I was really scared for about half a sec. Whenever someone does anything humiliating/bad, we've been calling it "The-person's-name Reel." For instance, this almost homicide goes on The Cynthia Reel.

The rollerskating party last night was a blast.



Woody is currently cutting together a rollerskating montage, so I won't go into detail, except to say it felt great to really go out for once! And with fun people who spoke English. It felt like home. Thanks to Adam and Adrian for inviting us! A lot of the people there were from Australia or Europe. I don't think they thought I could speak English at first.



PS. Rollerskating while dancing is hard, but try this:



That, my friends who are not familiar, is a toilet that is commonly found in China. One basically squats down like if you were out camping. Also, you need to bring your own toilet paper since they rarely provide it for you. We've been pretty lucky with finding regular toilets, and all of our hotels have them, but I still get pretty anxious if I have to go the bathroom while we are sight-seeing. The actual act is not that bad. It's more the smell. Also, the stalls rarely lock and they only come up to my chest when I stand, so there isn't really any privacy.

Now for some random highlights from Beijing and Shanghai:

- As Woody mentioned, he began heavily sniffing out bootleg dvds in Beijing. It is always a semi-shady industry. The first time, a man approached us while we are walking out of the Silk Market (underwhelming, btw). He took us to a nail/hair salon, and they rolled out a suitcase from a closed room.



- Here is a mobile bootleg music stand in Shanghai. Everything is still attached to the bicycle. Handy for a quick escape!



- While walking along a night market street in Beijing, I saw a Chinese sex shop for the first time. Apparently, 1977 Arnold Schwartzenegger is the epitome of manhood.



- Latest fashion report: You know what's so hot right now? Full face visors.



- Here is a late, but promised picture from the hot springs.



- Our first day in Shanghai, we went to YuYuan Garden. It is hard to find because they built a shopping labyrinth around it. It was built in the 1500s as a private garden, but is now open to the public as "an excellent model of classical Chinese gardening."



- I leave you with some behind the scenes footage. After our climb on the great wall, we ate at a restaurant at the base of the wall. The waitress recommended a dish that you can't find anywhere else, so we got it. It was a boiling cauldron of a whole chicken including the head. Our parents wouldn't have any issues with this, I'm sure, but being semi-vegetarian anyways, I was already not into eating it. It made Simon lose his appetite, especially after we spent 20 minutes coming up with puns and Simon shot "Quackers: The Headless Chicken stand-up comedian" voiced by Woody. This is prob the only footage you will see of it since no one has the stomach to cut it.



The chef is probably wondering what is wrong with us. Answer: as LCD soundsystem would say, we are North American Scum.