Sunday at purple mountain

Sunday shot my plans for a relaxing weekend out the window, but I had a wonderful time nonetheless. Tonight, I've promised myself an early bedtime, but promises are only as good as the conviction with which they're made, and so....

Sunday morning I decided to buy a new bike. I got directions to la rue du bicyclette and Diane B. and I took a bus-walk adventure over to the bike shops. I ended up buying another bike for somewhere around 200RMB, like $30, and then a slightly better lock for another $5 or so. Would you like to meet her? Ok...here you go....
This is Emily, she has promised not to stray too far from home.

She seems pretty sturdy so far, but it's only been a day. I think she might be fixed on a lower gear than Happy Bike, but it could just be me.

Diane got another bike too, which we dubbed the Silver Surfer, since it's a total beater silver cruiser with a turquoise seat. I don't think I have a picture of S.S. for you.

Then, four of us went to Purple mountain. We saw the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen mausoleum, and some of the Linggu scenic area. The park is huge, and I intend to go back during the national holiday week we have coming up soon. There's a botanical/Chinese herb garden, and a celestial observatory, and "underwater world" and all kinds of stuff. I bought the year long pass, and intend to use it like mad. Make sure to check out the pictures on flickr, it's pretty amazing. I'll try to organize my flickr page soon, I know it's kind of a madhouse right now. After a tiring day trekking around the mountain, we went to dinner at this wonderful Korean restaurant, and then shopping around Hunan Lu, where I bought some pretty awesome mistranslated T shirts including a Giraffe saying "Meaning? The What's" and "Nacho girlfriend", which I guess isn't exactly poorly translated, just funny. Then a bus adventure home, and K.O. until 6am this morning. Clinic was good today, nothing incredible but good, learned a bunch about herbs and what have you. Now we have a birthday dinner for Lindsay, and then I swearswearswear, I'm going straight to bed!

Ok, I'm going to organize my photos some now, so I don't drive everyone crazy.