Ring my bell

Weather: fine and mild, not a cloud to be seen.

Caption:> We're mobile: Frikkie striking a poser pose with our new bikes.

We bought ourselves brand new bikes today. Mine's black and red and I've named it Griet, after the horse in Liewe Heksie. Frikkie's is lumo yellow and black. We rode home in afternoon traffic from the bike shop. My life flashed before my eyes a couple of times, but we made it home safely. I also have a basket on my bike, for when I nip round to the Carre Four I have a place to put my purchases. We have officially moved up a step on the Beijing traffic food chain and it feels good. Now we just have to perfect the art of dodging pedestrians.

Discovered more street food today. Officially there's no street food in Beijing. I'm told that it was all cleaned up for the Olympics, but the good news is that the little stalls are slowly but surely coming back. Mostly it's somebody with a bike (for a quick getaway), with a tiny little counter/cooking area on the back preparing just one kind of dish. There's the usual mielies, but there's also sweet potatoes slow cooked on coals, the pancake thing with danja, and then noodles, that come in big sheets, are chopped up and served with tofu and all kinds of sauces. And this time of year there's also toffy dates, just like toffy apple, just with a few dates in stead of one apple. I've tried the dates - not really my thing. We had the noodles today from a little stall inside a supermarket. OMG was it delicious. Really, truly delicious. And all for 4 RMB. I really have to find out what all these delicious dishes are called, but all in good time.

I have a lunch appointment with Jason, my new friend. He seems very excited about it. I want to learn how to count. And say good bye, cause my two word Chinese vocab is getting a bit limiting.

BTW - I didn't go to the Diesel shop. I decided that I really didn't need another pair of jeans and let's face it 390RMB isn't exactly for free.

I looked around today and you know what - Beijing isn't crowded. Yes, it's a big, busy city, but quite frankly so is London and I've gone shopping in London on a Saturday morning when it's been far more crowded than here. Just a thought.