Tonight we stopped by a snack market, featuring tasty treats like fried scorpions, boiled starfish, crunchy lizards, seahorse kebabs, silkworms, whole baby squid, and, you know, magical wands of candied fruit. No big deal.

The scorpion photo is a little bit blurry because they were wiggling. The get threaded onto a bamboo skewer when they're still alive

The open kitchen at Din Tai Fung is packed floor-to-ceiling with bamboo baskets, steam wafting frantically through the air as a dozen chefs, equally frantic, scoop filling and pinch dough into bulbous half-moons. The world-famous dumpling restaurant has two locations, and I am sitting on a vinyl bench outside of the take-out area at the branch at Shin Kong Place, a six-floor shopping mall that flaunts designer brand names at stratospheric prices.

Oh, adventure.

China certainly keeps me on my tiptoes. If I were an asshole, I might write something like "Good thing I packed a sense of humor!" but since I'm not a fan of getting punched in the babymaker, I'll keep that linguistic gem to myself.

Yesterday, I decided to use the Olympics to my advantage and do the exact opposite of what everyone in China is trying to do; get OUT of Beijing.

The cynical part of my brain scoffed at the news. Big fucking surprise. Who didn't see this coming?

The naive, doe-eyed, shy little girl part of my brain (it's small, but it exists) was incredulous. But...but...how could anyone have seen this coming?

There was a stabbing today in Beijing.

The first day of the Olympic Games should have been a joyous one, an all-day celebration of athletics and intercontinental patriotism.