Zaijian gong gong qi che (Goodbye bus!)

Hey everybody. So I bought a bike yesterday. Yay! It was really getting to be a pain having to take the bus to school everyday. It's so slow, especially in the morning. Now biking to school and around campus will be alot quicker. Buying a bike was a very interesting experience though. You have to buy your bike at the stolen bike market if you want a cheap bike. And even if you don't, if you buy a nice new bike it will end up part of the stolen bike market pretty quickly. So Laura and I met up with one of our friends from Sichuan University, Violet, who wanted to sell her bike. We walked across the river and down this side street. About 2 blocks down Violet told a woman standing on the corner that she wanted to sell her bike. So the woman took us down this other street and into a small concrete garage thing off the street. Then she brought another guy and Violet argued about the price for awhile and they finally came to some agreement. Then they started bringing out bikes for us to try. We would ride them in the street for a little while and then come back to the garage and say whether we liked them or not. If we didn't they would ride the bike away somewhere and ride back a few minutes later with another one. It was all very mysterious. So Laura and I found bikes we liked and bought them for 80 kuai each (about $10), but Violet was still trying to find one. Then the lady starts yelling that the police are coming and makes us ride our bikes away. We waited for Violet out on another road and when she came with her new bike we rode over to campus to the repair shop to have repairs done. I just had to have the seat raised and a new part put on one of the pedals. Now its works perfectly, or fine anyways. I miss my bike back home, Xiao Hongse, but this one will be good for this year. I haven't named it yet, but it is silver and light purple and it has a black basket in front.In other news, I made my first meal here. I bought peanut butter at the store the other day, thinking it was just regular peanut butter. But no, it was spicy peanut butter, which was really gross. So tonight I made rice and stir fried cauliflower, carrots, and green beans that I bought at a little market close to our house and put a spicy peanut sauce on it. It turned out pretty well and next I'm going to try something a little more adventurous and try some actual Chinese dishes. This was just a trial run. But they have wonderful markets here. It's like the farmers market everyday. But you have to be careful about checking the produce because I found a worm in one of my apples. They also sell this yogurt that I've been eating for breakfast alot, but you drink it with a straw. It's a lot thinner than yogurt in the states, but it still tastes good.

I also went running today for the second time. I can feel the pollution alot more when I run, but it's still not nearly as bad as everyone says. The only thing is all the buildings look dirty and there is dirt EVERYWHERE because of all the dust in the air (particulates). It reminds me of when people talk about London during the Industrial Revolution. I found a really nice path by this little river (also polluted) that I run on and is not that crowded. I have to find places where there aren't that many people otherwise it's really embarrassing. Everyone stops what they're doing to stare and I get alot more laowai's (foreigner) than usual. Everyone does it, I just try to find less crowded places so there's not as MANY people staring at me. I guess I expected that though. I tried to go swimming in the pool in my building complex after that but I cannot figure out when it's open. I'll try again later.