Rain stimulates innovation

Today I wrote my first official essay in Chinese - 400 characters about my views on love and marriage. My specialty.

I am strangely obsessed with a Chinese invention that is extremely useful in China: the bike poncho. I just think it is such a clever solution to the inevitable pain of riding your bike in the rain. The ratio of bikes to humans in Beijing has to be pretty close to 1:1 and people ride their bikes even when there is a typhoon. I have tried to think of every excuse to buy one, but since I can't find one, I'll probably just buy one anyway.

Speaking of rain, it is currently raining. I wonder what is in the rain that is falling from this sky. And I also wonder whether the blue skies in all the postcards I wrote yesterday are real or photoshopped. I saw a sign today advertising the 5th Annual Asian Wind Energy Convention, which I think would be an interesting convention to attend.

Today I went to a Chinese church (one of the Chinese roommates regularly attends this church). When Bill Clinton came to Beijing, he came to this church. I listened to the sermon in English (with headphones), but sang and listened to the rest of the service in Chinese to see how much I could understand...which was not too much. The service was much like any church service in the US, and the sermon was very interesting. We talked about Daniel and the lion's den story, with the minister paralleling the recent earthquake and the Cultural Revolution as times of trial which test our faith. She knew someone that cut up their bible and hid it in different places during the Cultural Revolution so that it wouldn't be confiscated and she could still read it - would we have done this?

CHINGLISH ALERT:
(I really can't remember where this is from, possibly the zoo, but I don't think the context will really help anyways...your guess is as good as mine.)
Prohibit playing Kongming, latent we are all safe.