figured out the story of our room

...李老师在北大法学院的资历和地位... 李省长、吴校长、苏力老师、兴良老师、陶大律师等等都是她的学生，芮沐先生和她是忘年交，她在美国时曾“逼”过罗豪才先生替自己做饭！
[-results of voyeuring the blogs of students u were exchanged with.] i don't exactly know who these pple our prof previously taught are, but she sure sounds influential!

that explains how our prof LMQ (she taught us our compulsory chinese prep module last semester) got us a room in the 'atas' hard-to-get block that everyone "waaa!"s at in contrast to the normal 北大 "贫民窟" or "squatter settlement" just a few steps away. and considering she has taught each batch that is headed for beijing, to fig out why we got 'special treatment' needs to be traced back to -- the frustrating delay in getting our visa documents from Beida 1-1.5 weeks before the everything-shuts-down CNY period!
otherwise, prof wouldnt have called up beida on behalf of the admin, blah blah blah. nasty thing #1 delay turned good thing. God is good!

and then i got quite a crappy roommate right on the first 凄凉 night we arrived... but turns out that she made me more resolute to change rooms (from super-atas 2-per-unit to less-atas 3-per-unit) when both SH and I were indecisive about the options (again, open to us only because of influential prof). we love our cosy room/unit and our nice taiwanese housemate now! so that is nasty thing #2 crappy roommate turned good thing. by God's grace =)

mini efforts to personalise my room.
still havent figured out what 'blu-tac' is called in chinese!

we get one small cosy room each and share a living room + mini bathroom.

pretty atas price by beijing/beida standards, but i like! [oops]

i like staying on campus... it's like a little cosy town on its own =)

for eg. walking back from night class, there are lots of 地摊 selling weird things from dvds (they give out namecards) to stationery to books. anyway, it's more expensive to photocopy a book than to buy a book here. the prof actually offers you his copy to go zap it if you don't wanna buy it.

天坛 temple of heaven

in ancient times, no women within 500m of 天坛

(where the emperor came as the 天子 son of heaven to pray for good harvest)

7 girls at 天坛~

clear blue skies can be a rare sight in beijing.

PSI is prob an average of 100(-150?) here!

i shouldn't have bought a white jacket!