I would never have believed it...

If I hadn't witnessed it with my own two burning, red eyes.

I think I'm going to have to change the name of my last blog post to "Four trick pony" because I need to add one more theme to our time here in Beijing - pollution. You seriously can not understand it if you don't live in it. Last week we had blue skies, warmer weather and I was starting to get spring fever. This week we have had the most unbelievably vile, nasty, tear inducing air pollution. My spring fever has changed to get-me-the-hell-outta-here fever. It has to be the one of the worst polluted cities in the world. I haven't had time to Google it, but my eyes, nose, head and throat tell me it's so. I had no idea air like this existed before we moved here.

Like I commented on a friend's Facebook wall who was also lamenting our wretched air, I needed to blog and post pictures so someday when my boys are trying to explain to the doctors why their fiercely antismoking Mom is in the small percentage of nonsmokers with lung cancer, they can just pull up pictures. This is pure pollution. No fog, no haze, no mist.

It's funny because there are quite a few expat blogs that I cycle through and read when something catches my eye. 100% of them have posted something complaining about the pollution and how grumpy and depressed it's been making them. Add me to the bunch.