Air and Water

Living in Beijing provides all sorts of adventures. The very air we breathe and water we drink can be cause for excitement and/or worry. I read an article a while ago about how you should even filter your shower water in Beijing because the steam can be toxic.

That's not realistic for us. We are just grateful that our apartment has hot running water in the bathroom! Lately we've taken to boiling our water before filtering it. This is a picture of what it looks like in the bottom of the pan after we boil it. The water here has all sorts of heavy metals. I assume that's what the white stuff at the bottom of the pan is.

Yesterday I woke up to orange air. I don't know how describe it except that the air was orange and everything was covered with a layer of orange dust. This, of course, was a dust storm. I didn't get any pictures, but I wish I would have. It's not pretty.

We had a Relief Society meeting that day and I took a cab in. The cab smelled like smoke but I couldn't exactly open the window for fresh air, either. Some days Beijing is just like that.