Postcards (明信片) from China (中国)

I had a couple of successful interactions with real Chinese people today!

I visited the post office (邮局) and sent of the first round of postcards to Canada (加拿大).  I said "明信片到加拿大" which I'm not sure is completely correct grammar, but it got the point across.  I only had to get the lady to repeat the price about 4 times before I got it.  Only 50RMB for 11 post cards.  One of my classmates told me today that she sent postcards from Hong Kong to Russia and it took almost 4 months.  Hopefully it won't take that long or you'll be getting postcards from China while I'm in Italy (which will be weird).  Keep your fingers crossed!

At my appartment there was already a lady waiting at the elevator, so I said "你好".  I always say nihao now to break the ice, but mostly they just ignore me.  This time this lady said "(something unintelligable)" so I said "对不起，我的汉语不好."  (Sorry my Chinese is very bad.)  After much repeating she said she thought my Chinese was pretty good, and she was surprised I've only been here for a week, so I explained I've been taking lessons for over a year before the trip.  I told her I was from 加拿大 and she asked Vancouver or Quebec?  (I guess these were the only places she knew.)  I said Victoria (维多利亚 - I think that's right), which is close to Vancouver.  This has been my longest conversation yet!

Sad new about the explosions in Boston.  This was the first thing I heard this morning, and it threw my whole day off.  I hope they get the mf who did it.  This afternoon the police presence in Beijing was noticably higher.  Security is tight here anyways - you need to run your bag to get into Tiananmen square, the Olympic Park, every subway station, and most other attractions.  This afternoon there were police at all the major corners, the bridges, and outside the malls and banks.  I don't know if we're getting extra attention in this area because there are more foreigners here, or if it's like this all over.  That's the nature of things these days, when something happens the whole world goes into lockdown.