10/26 Thursday

I now have Skype, and have purchased a Skype phone, so I can call the States using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), which is really cheap ($.02 per minute). I spent my entire morning trying to download the program because the file kept of getting timed out due to a slow connection. I had to try about 7 different download sites before I could establish a strong enough link.

In the afternoon I took the subway out to Jun Shi Bo Wu Guan, or the Military Museum, but I was heading for the park behind it, called Yu Yuan Tan. After skirting some incredibly daunting and massive military buildings around the museum, I came to the park. As I had remembered from the year before, this park was a hot spot for kite flying and dog walking. All sorts of dogs were there (I saw a Jack Russell Terrier last year there), and there were tons of kites in the sky, some of which looked like airplanes, and others were more traditional, brightly colored with streamers. There is a massive bell there with the national anthem inscribed on it, March of the Volunteers, complete with notes. Written by Tian Han (lyrics) and Nie Er (music) in 1935, the anthem recalls the bravery of the Chinese people in defending their nation during the 1930's against Japanese invasion in the northeast. The song was banned during the Cultural Revolution, but was later reinstated as the national anthem.

On the way home from the park, I stopped at Xiu Shui Jie, the Silk Market. Here I was able to buy my Skype phone and a little mouse for my computer (the mouse says 'Sony' on it, but there's no way it's real). I was able to bargain both down from 450 yuan to 220. Luckily, both pieces of hardware work.

Colm and I went out for another foot massage today but at another place near the apartment complex. This place was a bit less upscale, but not sketchy, and it was cool because you get to watch a movie during the massage. They have a selection of about 200+ DVD's in the lobby to choose from; of course they are all bootleg, but they work. Colm and I watched Formula 51, in which Samuel L. Jackson is a drug chemist escaping a female assassin in Britain. It was pretty funny.