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I forgot to tell you that when I was at the Los Angeles airport I had tons of time to kill so I went up to a restaurant and had a cheeseburger and a couple beers. When I was done, I had to get back to check in (I had all of my luggage...the Air China counter didn't open until about an hour after I arrived in L.A.) so I loaded up all my stuff onto this luggage cart. As I was walking away, I noticed that the luggage cart said, "Do Not Remove - Daily Grill" but my server told me to take it, so I was all nervous about that. I ended up getting onto an escalator going down, and of course the luggage cart pointed down as I got on it, and all of my luggage fell forward off the luggage cart and went barrelling down the entire escalator. I was so glad nobody was on the escalator in front of me. And of course 6,000 people saw it - it was right in front of the international terminal check-in area.

I got sick again, and coughed all night last night. I am so annoyed. I was just about over my cold before I left and a whole new cold started right up again. The air here is very smoggy, so I just don't feel 100%. People are walking around with surigcal masks on their faces. They look like those sars maks, but I think maybe the people have asthma or something. The air here is very polluted. They make cute ones with little animals on them, and there are different brands of masks. You can tell that some are almost like, designer masks. I have seen probably one hundred of them, nobody's embarrassed to be wearing them. It's interesting. They're made of cotton too, not the paper kind you're probably thinking.

Today I am going to the Great Wall. Pretty exciting. I'll write more about it later.

-Kady Mao