My chinese studies today were good. I read through all my vocab words and extensivly practiced some of my vocabulary. I also practice the 看得出來，看不出來 grammar structure. I have to say it put a lot of my previous chinese into perspective as I understood why those sentences are like that, and that I could use the same pattern else where. I read and wrote a facebook message in chinese as well which was a first. I litely practice my ABC vocabulary as well. It seems I need to come up with some method with that. Learning 200 words all at once and continually practicing the same words for a week is somewhat, unmotivating. I have to remember that keeping up my will to learn has become more important than the content of what i am learning. Also I almost completed the chapeter i am on today. I will be able to start the note book soon which will be good. I am have way finished with time, yet 70% finished with the lesson. Just gotta keep this up. Some words to remember/ practice are... 解決，確實，說實在的，翻譯，and 回答。

Today I finally convinced Melody to go to the beach with me near Monkey island. Going to the beach there is no easy task. We have to park our bike near the edge of the jungle and hike down on a wild trail. Where to find the trail? Who knows, that was part of the adventure. We headed out and arrived and parked the car at cliff look out. We have seen motorbikes parked there with no drivers nearby. From that postion we have seen local people leisurly fishing from the rocks. Thats what I want to do. But how to get down. We walked around a bit after parking to scope out the potential path to walk down from. Melody keeps talking about the potential for snakes or a monkey raid on my head which has me a little nervous about this adventure. Remember, she is a city girl, I grew up in a forest. After scoping out two seemingly impossible trails, I convicne her to follow me down the third. It looks more like a dry stream bed then a trail but it still the best of the three. Trash is everywhere and it seems we have entered a jungle. As we walk deeper down, a trail becomes more apparent. Will this take us down to the beach? Melody is still not so sure but after some reassurances she follows. She is only wearing sands and I shoes so I am not suprised by her reluctance. The path suddenly become steeper as it becomes obvious we will need ropes to venture further down the trail. Melody spots some venomis centapids but i push her to move on. As we move further down we find some ropes tied to the trees. It turns out they are quite need as the grounds becomes more treterous and the landscape steeper. With my tennis shoes and wilderness experance I move like a panther through the jungle, melody is slower, but understandable. Mosquitos smell the taste of fresh meat and began swarming us. I now understand how jungles are prevenlent of mosqitos. Thousands of mosqitos are flying every directions, dive bombing us. I am protects by a thick coat of red hair. Melody on the other hand finds herself extremely vulnerable. We head down the mountain more, there is no end to our barrage of parasites. I can see the water now and the trail is growing steeper and weaker. The ropes end and I am not sure which way to go. We have 2 options and I start to scope it out. As melody waits for me to conclude she is eatten alive. I survery her legs only to see after her attepmts to ride the mosqitos there are at least 2o still on her upper rear thigh. perhaps 4 per square inch. I help her to kill the parasites and I offer to head back as I am sure she will be very itchy later. I find the route and we continue down to the coast line. Finally there is a clearing and we come out on to rocks, mosqitos still are attacking us from every directions and i tell melody we need to run down further onto the rocks of the beach to ride ourselves of this evil. I feel that sunlight will be our only weapon agaisnt them. We run down next to the crashing shore and are shocked by the beauty for the landcape. The ocean is rough, with no real sand to speak of. Large corse rocks sit powerfully in the water. In the distance I see one man daring to swim a bit. It seems the trail is not completely wild but common to some locals. We walk out onto the beach and the 1 man becomes 2 of three. I am still impressed that even we are inside a large city we can go to wild jungle with monkeys, go down to the shore and see a coast with only a few people. We take some pictures with our cell phone and gaze off into the sea to take the whole view in. I am interested in the spot as I would like to come back and go fishing sometime. We start to walk up the beach and notice the locals are even more alarmed as we move closer to them. One man is sitting on a rock and as my view point changes i see two more men behind the rock, and one off in the distance. A few meters more I realize that one man is naked. I quickly report my findings to melody as I am taller, in front of her, and have better eye site, of the situation and we turn around back towards the trail. We move back to where we have no veiw of the nudist and I can see another man, number 5, in the far background. He is apparently nude as well. I realize they are just here to swim and probably brought no swimming gear. Though strange for me, probably quite normal for them . Also melody is the only girl around. One man fully clothed sees use and keeps moving closer to us. He has been moving towards us the whole time. I was hoping originally to be able to explore for a good fishing spot but my plans are all spoiled. Melody I move back to see if we can walk another direction but it seems to dangerous for her to walk that way. Rock climbing in sandals is usally advized. The man though now is moving closer, and he keeps stopping and looking at us. I tell melody to keep an eye on him as I scope the area. i don't want any trouble from creepy people. Eventually we decide to head back after melody reminds me she needs to use the restroom. We pass back into the mosqitos and this time we are in a near run as we conquer the mountain. At the top we are panting as we just killed ourselves with exersion. It was worth it, and certainly not a day to forget. Also it was the most mosqitos I have ever seen in my life. We got back on the motorbike and drove down the mountain back to our apartment.

Today I was shopping on Jianguo Rd at the big computer store. The strangest thing happened to me. After shopping in the basement of the store and purchasing two items, I conviced Melody to go shopping with me on the upper floors the store. While walking up the stairs a man in a blue shirt seemingly trying to step out of the way of me blocked me. We both side steped and thus were trapped again. Then I made a hard turn and passed the man. After going up the stairs the man passed me on the second floor. He clearly turned his head and made solid eye contact and thus I thought I had bumped him accidently with my hand basket though I had no feeling of doing so. I raised my hand to indicate an apoligy. Melody also said sorry to the man. He slowed down to our speed and kept turning his head back to survey us. At this point I took strong notice of this man. He was wearing a blue polo, young, perhaps 27 by the looks of him. He had black hair, gelled. He wore glasses and he appeared to look like a computer nerd. He was tall and had a small pop belly. As we stolled the store I took special notice of the man as something about him disturbed me, mostly likely it was his continous looks at me. He walked in front of us, as he stepped on the escaltor for the 3rd floor I told Melody, lets not follow him up, hes really creeping me out in a whisper. We swiched gears and walked through the CD's. With no interest in such goods we turned back to the escalator. On the ride up I joked Melody, what if that guy came back down again. We both looked off the escalator and sure enough, he was there, back on the second floor. He had gone up the escalator and instantly came back down. Was he looking for something he saw on the second floor? Why did he come back down suddenly, what was going on? Sure enough nothing to worry about. At this point both Melody and I are very aware of the man and the possibility we are being stalked/followed. When walked swifty around to the next escalator set and noticed the man had instantly jumped back on the escalator coming up from the second to the third floor. Why did he quickly go from 3 to 2 and back to 2 to 3 as fast as we went up one floor. Now the situation was becoming very alarming. Is this guy clearly stalking us in this store? As we went to the 4th floor we thought if he comes instantly up we know he is following us. We went to the back to hide a bit and scope out the situations. Who is this guy? What does he want? We waited a little bit, and nothing, and still nothing. Oh no, there he is. He came. Now he is looking even stronger at us. Making heavy eye contact and making long obvious glances at us. He doesn't look dangerous. Does he know me? Did he follow us here. Many thoughts raced through my mind. We walked swiftly through the store, he went to the next eilse and walked at the same swift pace in the same direction just next to us. As we went to the very back, he stopped at a pile of comic books. He stood there and simply gawked in our direction. To draw out his obviousness we bee lined back and forth throug the short eiles to see if he would follow. Is this guy crazy. Dose he want to ask me something? What the hell is going on? We circled around to the back corner as the man blocked the down escalator. He kept himself centered as we pivoted around his position. I took special observation to see if he had a weapon. Nothing obviously concealed, anything in his pockets? Who knows. He walked 2 of the 4 eisle widths closer. Should we contact the store clerk? Are we in danger? The man stopped at the end of the aisle and squated down to observe something. We held our ground. If he draws nearer we will walk off our postion and circle around. He keeps looking at us heavily and doesn't conceal his actions well. Suddenly he must of realized hes too close. He turns back and walks a few meters away from the exit and away from us. Thats our chance. We go straight for the escalator. We walk surely but slowly. Get on the escalator quitly and let it move us to the 3rd floor. As we sunk past the floor we steathily walked down the metal steps. We ran to the next set and ran down those. Forget if people think we are stealing something, this man is DEFINATLY following us. We ran to the 2nd floor set of steps and ran down those again. We made it out the exit and in full sprint ran back to the motorbike. Melody hid behind the pole as I started and pulled around the motorbike. If he comes out now something violent could happen. Inside was safe, here is not. Its dark, and no one is around in this parking lot. Who is this lunitic? I started the motorbike and pulled around. Melody hopped on and I pulled down the curb. One last look at back towards the door reveal our pursuer was lost. I drove off down a side alley and zigzaged back to the main road. It seemed we were clear of our stalker. Or were we? Does he know who I am? Does he know where I live? He lacked professional grace. Who would want to hire someone to follow me? Do I have any loose ends? I told melody to watch her back for a few days and keep an eye out for the creeper, I will do the same. Everyday brings something new.

If you know me then you know that I am studying Chinese. I thought maybe I would start to post my progress with the language and new words as I find them. Also I am hoping to document things I did through out the day. If no one ever reads this I will be just fine as I hope this will be a resource for myself to reflect back on.