My voice has remerged again and the sore throat has disappeared. It was funny talking in whispers for 2 days - it felt like I was sharing secrets with everyone. Class was funny yesterday when our new listening teacher asked us the class to introduce ourselves and I could only loudly whisper 我叫马淑恒。我现在病所以不能说话 "my name is Ma Shuheng and I can't talk because I"m sick." Second unfortunate moment was when my language partner phoned to set up a conversation time only to hear my apologetic mandarin rasp asking her to call again in a few days. Good thing I didn't completely lose my voice. I'd be completely screwed if that were the case since my chinese characters aren't good enough to communicate through writing.

I may have regained by voice but unfortunately I still have the most annoying, uncontrollable cough. The cliche is that everyone gets sick after arriving in Beijing because of the pollution; I thought I was in the clear as I entered my third week here, which is of course, the perfect opportunity to fall ill. There's a permanent tickle in my throat that triggers a bad hack every now and then. Coughing is really exhausting! It's bad enough that I woke myself up during a coughing fit last night. My roommate must hate me after last night.

Cough aside, I feel perfectly fine and not sick enough to see a doctor. It would just be nice to find something to suppress the damn hacking, at least when I am sleeping but I haven't been able to find cough syrup or medicine anywhere. Not even in the local Watsons where the only thing remotely medicinal are vitamins and weight-loss pills. I was counting on Watsons too since it's a Hong Kong drug store chain. Maybe the concept of a drug store actually selling over-the-counter drugs is too novel a concept in Beijing.

There's a traditional chinese medicine hospital near Wudaokou but I'm not ready to resort drinking 苦茶 "bitter tea" just yet.