Ahh, the joy of traveling. Thank you all for your words of encouragement and support. I have been able to read them Daly but haven't had the time to type an update. Life on the road certainly isn't groundhog day and the time has whipped by. Now for the update from the last few days. I am warmer - I asked for an extra quilt and that has made a huge difference at night but the weather outside is still very cold in the mornings and at night. That first night it was only -13 but felt like -45.
First day of sight seeing was so cold it was quite uncomfortable to be outside for any length of time. Thankfully it is not snowing or windy - it is beautiful and clear but still cold. I headed out on the subway - amazingly easy to maneuver - I guess all that practice in NYC pays off - and came above ground at Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City - cruised a bit, took in the grandeur of the scale of everything and headed back underground. I saw a stop for 'Silk Market' and ended up there for a lot of the day negotiating for pearls and having some custom lengths made for my custom orders!!!!! (Debbie, Linda, Faye - all good)
Walked around a bit then decided I wanted to see some of the 'Lego' villages I had seen from the air. This City looks so brand new and cosmopolitan it could be NYC or London. the architecture is really modern and it just seem like my idea if China. So I stood a bus stop and waited for a non crowded bus. Bus 666 came along and I thought that was a sign. Hopped on, paid my 20 cent fare and wondered where it might be going. This is more my kind of tour. I figured all buses must make a loop? Beijing buses have a conductor on them. She takes the money and then yells out the window constantly or talks on the microphone as you come to the stop. The conductor on this bus was hilarious. She was so tired she kept talking on the Mic the whole time, would fall asleep and then wake, continue yelling.......over and over. In between she would stare at me. There are not lots of foreigners here outside of the main streets it seems - maybe they are somewhere else??? OK, yeah - they were at Tienanmen Square.
Anyway - about .5 hours of really interesting scenery and stressing the conductor, she started to try and talk to me. I couldn't figure it out and just continued for another 30 minutes, through brand new high rise villages, around some really poor areas, back through new villages - from villages I mean high rise towns the size of our downtown. Probably 50 -60 thousand people. Each village or community had a huge gate in front - like a big monument - like 3 or 4 stories high. Back to the bus. By this time the conductor was frantically telling everyone who got on about the weirdo who was riding without a destination. She had me pegged! Everyone on the bus sat looking at me with sort of kind smiling faces but no one spoke any English. People on, people off. More time passing and I start wondering if maybe, in China, the bus actually just ends in Tibet? or Nepal? At about 2 hrs in and quite a stressed, now wide awake conductor-girl, a woman gets on the bus and she (I guess) figures me out and will attempt to solve the problem. She sits behind me, yells something to the driver, the rest of the bus agrees with the plan and the bus takes a bit of a different route and pulls up to a big building. the woman behind says - Teacher, Teacher - School - get off! I think they thought I was an English teacher and would recognize the school I taught at. HM. Plus I owed another 75 cents for my big ride. I offered money but tried to do sign language like ' a loop???'  'back to City????'. Apparently not on this bus. Some old people agreed to take me on. The conductor and the best English speaker wrote a note for me - Bus 668 and a bunch of Chinese. The old people ushered me off the bus, across the street and deposited me at a bus stop. All good. 668 went back to the City.

I have no sense of direction. I get lost in phone booths and knew this would be a huge problem for me traveling alone. Yup. Off the bus, into the subway ( I do subway well), then above ground, all dark and lost.
Another long adventure involving three 20 somethings and a very expensive Tea Ceremony scam - later and I was still wandering around. The Tea date with my new friends who I met while lost actually was a lot of fun but they were trying to scam me and make me pay at the end. Nah. Nadda. Nope. They were quite delightful though and we had a very nice couple of hours learning about each others cultures. Hi Koko. Susan and Liang f you are reading this.
Many hotel lobby's later, each place asking for directions, I made it home tired and happy with my day.