Vacation

So it's finally gotten cold here in the Northern Capital (北京=Beijing=Northern Capital), and that means that I've come down with a pretty unpleasant sore throat.  I'm drinking lots of hot tea with honey, and I think it's helping somewhat, but it's no fun, and I'm hoping to beat it soon.
Someone asked me about this in my last post, but I'll just say it here as well; Beijing definitely gets snow, and apparently significant amounts of it; I'm told that the city actually uses cloud seeding to get more precipitation in the winter as a way of reducing the pollution.  Winter is apparently the worst time of year for pollution because people start using significant amounts of coal to heat their houses; thus any sort of reduction in pollution is a good one.
Last week we had midterms on Monday and Tuesday, and a break Wednesday through Friday, but there were still class activities planned.  On Wednesday we went to dinner and a Karaoke place, on Thursday we played the card game Mafia (杀手, shashou, hitman) for two hours, and on Friday we went to the Olympic Park for about 5 hours.  It was a very tiring week, despite being a break week; I kind of wish it could have been a little less planned, but most of it was all right; the Olympic Park was pretty, though a bit rushed, and Mafia is pretty fun when you're only allowed to speak Chinese.  The karaoke...might take some explaining.
Karaoke in China (and most of East Asia, from what I understand) works VERY differently from the states, and it's a MASSIVELY popular way to spend an evening out.  There are entire...establishments (?) devoted to it; instead of going to a bar or restaurant and singing in front of a bunch of people you don't really know, you get a group of friends together, rent a room with comfy couches, a karaoke machine, a big-screen TV, and huge amounts of alcohol, and sing whatever you want (Seriously; they have a massive selection of Asian and Western music), while watching the music videos that go along with the songs.  It's kind of weird, and I imagine it's a lot more fun if you're not entirely sober; It was still kind of entertaining, but people mostly picked songs I didn't enjoy listening to, so I'll have to try it again with people with more similar tastes in music.
Now that you know way more than you ever wanted to about Chinese karaoke, I'll be going to bed; class comes early tomorrow, and I want to beat this cough as soon as possible.  Oh, except I've just drunk three cups of tea...shoot; I'll be trying to go to sleep.