IKEA

I went to IKEA today with a Chinese friend.  Not surprisingly, it was a lot like any other IKEA you'll ever see, complete with swedish meatballs.  The ice cream cones were only 1 yuan = about 15 cents.  Hell yes.  I got a really sweet poster of lingonberries for my wall.  How Scandinavian is that?  

Anyways, Chinese studying is still progressing quite fast.  I bought a novel, "Sophie's World" in Chinese, and have been slowly working my way through the first chapter.  It's really fun and learning new words is kind of like a mystery story.  Very entertaining.  

I'm trying to make an effort to spend more time with Chinese people speaking chinese than with Europeans speaking English.  Tomorrow, I will cook Chinese food with my language partner.  In other good news, next week, I get to help a grad student build a new reactor for his microbial fuel cell project, and the week after, I will babysit his entire project (feed the beasties substrate every day).