Brrrrrrr (even more than last time)

Yesterday was a nice day in Beijing. At least it looked nice from our 22nd floor apartment window. Blue skies, sunny and just a little bit of pollution haze (well, this is a city of over 21 million people - what do you expect?). So we decided to go for an adventure out to the Blue Zoo, which is an aquarium not far from where we live. Back in California we live not far from the world famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, so we had to lower expectations. Actually, it wasn't too bad. Not busy (more on that later), tons of fish, turtles, sharks and other exciting underwater exhibits. Olivia was scared of the very big fish but otherwise seemed to like it. One part of the aquarium is a giant (now I mean huge, the scale that only the Chinese seem to be able to manage) underwater tunnel. There are fish, moray eels, manta rays, and big sharks swimming around in this tank right overhead. It was very impressive although Olivia seemed more interested in the moving walkway which slowly transported you through the tunnel.
After we spent about 1.5 hours in the aquarium, we decided that we'd walk to a nearby restaurant for a nice Chinese lunch. Jeez, we then realised why no-one was at the aquarium. Holy cow it was cold. Freeze your balls off (if I had them), worse than a chair-lift-in-a-howling-blizzard cold. Olivia's nose bled, and then froze. She cried because she was so cold and her little hands practically fell off. It was terrible, and later I discovered it was minus 9 degrees Centigrade or 16 degrees Farenheit. Blimey.
Now I am trying to figure out how to spend the rest of the winter competely indoors, or see if we can travel to warmer climes as much as possible for the next 3 months. The only redeeming factor is that yesterday was 21st December. The shortest day of the year! Bring on summer.