Long Vacation: Day 6

We woke up with the intent of seeing the dead body of Mao. If you don't know who that is, google him. The Readers Digest version: he established communism in China. His methods were questionable so whether that makes him the good guy or the bad guy, I still haven't decided but all I knew was that his body has been preserved and I was going to see it. It's the guy whose face is on all the paper money, can you blame me? ;) We went to Tiananmen Square determined.

Off the subway..

..and we found a building with his face on it. A good sign, no? (It was way cool to be in a place I'd seen tons of pictures of! Very stereotypical Beijing picture, I love it). Something about language barriers makes sight-seeing a problem--asking directions being the main concern. So although we really had no idea if Mao's body was through the tunnel that seas of Chinese people were walking through we decided to follow them anyway. We walked a ways and realized that we were in the Forbidden City. Surprise! After a little bit of deliberation Amanda and I decided that we didn't want to pay 65 kuai to go in..so we decided to head back to Tiananmen Square to find Mao's body again. After a bunch of wandering around like chickens with our heads cut off from the north end to the south end and back again, we figured out where the entrance was. Woot. But just as soon as we joined the thronging masses to be checked by security, a guard with a megaphone barked something at us and signaled us out of the line. We thought maybe it was because we were foreigners but eventually realized we couldn't bring our bags in. Annoyed and tired at this point we bagged that idea and impulsively decided to go to the Temple of Heaven.

Another cool park with dancing old people. Very quaint :) Here are some pictures..


(I think I need a new jumping pose. Still fun nonetheless!)






Here's something we never get home in Zhongshan--clear skies!!! I was definitely soaking it up, I miss blue skies so much.

We went to an open market for souvenirs and then for dinner we had famous Beijing duck! Oh but first...

...we met a turtle. And then they cooked him up and we ate him. This whole situation was very weird but I kinda liked it.


The duck! Yum :)


The cooked and plated turtle. I found it a little inhumane that it was all chopped up and cooked and arranged like a live turtle. I ate it's leg. Hehe :) It tasted pretty good. But mostly it was just cool that I was eating a turtle ;)



Once again my fascination with the sky. Something else I miss: sunsets. Beijing gave me a great one :)


And a random photo tip:

How to not get robbed on the metro

Long Vacation: Day 5

Drumroll please, this was the best day in Beijing!

And it includes my tour of the Great Wall, naturally.

It started at 7:30 when we all sleepily got into another grey van with a tour guide who looked Chinese but must have learned his English from an Aussie because he was sure rocking an Australian accent, it was the trippiest thing! A Chinese person with an Australian accent, try to imagine it for a second if you can. We’d paid for our tour to include the Ming Tombs as well as the Great Wall but had no idea plans to visit both jade and silk factories and also participate in a traditional Chinese tea-serving ceremony. Little did we know that each of those was just a marketing ploy to get us to buy their over-priced merchandise but ya know, all in the experience, right?

We started at the jade factory where they told us a 5 minute history of the culture of jade which was interesting but then they set us free in their store where we dinked around looking at cool stuff but keeping our money safely in our wallets to spend elsewhere. We picked up two blonde Danish girls here who were on the rest of the tour with us. We talked to them a little but one of them didn’t speak English very well. They were on a trip around the world and dressed interestingly. Mostly it was just funny and random :)

Next we visited the Ming Tombs, which were honestly a disappointment, but had their small perks. We chose the underground part of the tour that was just a re-creation of how it would have looked immediately after the Ming emperors were buried but it was still kind of neat. I felt a little jipped that everything was re-created and all the treasures has been moved to a museum and the boxes holding the bodies were just replicas, but when we asked our tour guide about it he simply said, “This isn’t Egypt!” Absolutely right, Leo, China is certainly not Egypt. For some reason that just works with everything I’ve learned about China at this point ;)

The best part about the tour was the ghost gate we passed on our way in and eventually had to go out, saying some sort of anti-ghost spell and brushing ourselves off so that the evil spirits couldn’t come back to the real world with us. We passed these ladies as they were coming out and they were all squealing as they went in, it was pretty hilarious :)


Then..we took one of the most windy/long bus rides ever, maybe due to hunger, tiredness, or anticipation of seeing the Great Wall but whatever the case it just seemed like it would NEVER end. It was one of those times that you turn to the person next to you and ask them, “Wait, how long have we been here?” because you honestly can’t remember anything before it. We did a lot of things to entertain ourselves and my favorite was definitely taking close-ups of eachother’s faces while they weren’t looking. Priceless :) And at one point I un-veiled my ability to bark like a dog to these people who thought they knew me after 3 months and they were amazed. From that point on I was referred to as “the little barking girl” by the tour guide. Sweet :) I was sitting on one of the seats facing backwards and had to switch a kid seats because the bends in the road were making me nauseous. Eventually we stopped for lunch and had one of the best meals I’ve had in China and then we rode a couple more minutes to Mu Tian Yu part of the Great Wall.

I got to do the Great Wall right. We bought tickets that included a ski lift up and a toboggan (like the Alpine Slide) down. It gave us maximum amount of time on the Great Wall and let’s be honest, it’s freaking amazing to say that I’ve done each of those on the Great Wall.

In a lot of ways the Great Wall was not what I imagined but there are not many more words to describe it so we go with pictures!!


Two thumbs up for the Great Wall!! I can check something off my Bucket List :)




Before I came to the Great Wall I had heard that it was mostly stairs. I am here to tell you this is absolutely true. Good thing I’ve had lots of practice since I’ve been in China, living and teaching on the fourth floor.


There are connecting guard towers in between stretches of the wall and with the amount of time we had there wasn’t much time to explore but Debbie, Joey and I booked it as fast as we could to this one over-looking a great stretch of wall and while the stairs nearly killed us it was worth it!


This was the background on my desktop for awhile :)



See what I mean? Stairs..


One last look at the Great Wall! We had to meet the tour guide soon but I really couldn’t peel myself away from the awesome sights around me! This is a restored part of the wall but even to keep it up is quite a feat! Someday I want to go to an original section of the wall but that will have to be an adventure for another time.


On the toboggan down!

We hurried and bought “I hiked the Great Wall” T-shirts and piled in our van and slept the whole way down. Spent but content :)

We went to the silk factory and saw a couple silk worms and raw silk sheets and were left to buy their stuff again and walked around the corner to the tea ceremony, and although it was once again just to get us to buy stuff it was still cool. The tea stuff is something that the Chinese government does for free at that particular tea house to keep the culture of tea-serving alive. Way fun to participate in something as central as tea to Chinese culture in so many ways! Seriously, it’s everywhere, in everything. There is a green tea version of Sprite, even! I could drink two of the herbal teas and although I wasn’t that impressed by the taste I felt very immersed in the experience. This is a part of life for so many here!


That was it for the tour, and I bet you know how we finished the day ;)

Would it surprise you to know I had to forcefully sit on my suitcase to convince the zipper to do its thing, and still had to put random items such as one mate of a shoe and my hairbrush in other people's suitcases?

It shouldn’t!

Long Vacation: Day 4

Alright this vacation has been the monkey on my back for too long and it’s time to get crackin’ and get it done. I’d like to be able to blog about other China things before I go home in a little over a month. Things are going to get a little less detailed from here but something has gotta give!

Today started out with an amazing Swiss breakfast from the bar at our hostel and yet again another confusing bus ride, this time to the Summer Palace.

The summer palace was a place that the emperor of the Qing Xing Fu hua somethin’ or other dynasty a long time ago would take his family during the summer to escape the sweltering heat of the season from their regular abode. It’s a HUGE collection of beautiful temples, pavilions, Buddha temples and outdoor hallways surrounding a lake that must have been heaven as a summer escape. Super crowded when I was there but it was fun to imagine the royal family floating around in beautifully ornate silk robes amid cherry blossoms carried on a light breeze during their stay here.


Long hallways call for kung fu poses


And I just could NOT pass up the opportunity to dress up and pose like an empress....just too good! I heard once that the inspiration for some of Queen Amidala's outfits were Chinese dignitary inspired and I can really see it, can't you?

A long tiring couple of hours walking around amid the crowded concourses of more Asian tour groups than should be allowed to inhabit an area at a time. It’s places like that that remind me that there are a billion people in this country. Oh China. Although it had been awhile since I’d had someone ask me for a picture because I’m blonde and white and here I got a few good, solid photo attacks so that was fun.

Just LOOK at ALL THOSE ASIANS!

Beijing is a weird vacation because everything is so old that it’s all been restored restored restored and sometimes walking around I couldn’t help but think that all of it was as unauthentic and artificial as Disneyland! But there still remains the fact that it used to exist sorta like it has been re-created now for me to appreciate, and let’s face it-- if I were Chinese I would appreciate it TONS MORE. But it was all nice and fun to see:) Honest, it was!

I’m sure the night ended with more shopping. It all kind of runs together at this point but it’s not even an exaggeration to say that we ended up at the silk market every night. Even when the vendors jokingly threaten to kill you because you’re too stubborn to buy for their price, it oddly enough is not discouraging. We all have spending addictions and Beijing sure takes those and runs a 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds with them..

Long Vacation: Day 3

Rolling out of bed at 11, obviously the result of our late night of clubbin’, was sort of a damper on the day but it couldn’t be helped. We still had the same number of waking hours, right? It just wasn’t during normal daylight hours..anyway, we caught a series of confusing subways and buses to a HUGE outdoor market where I felt too over-whelmed to buy anything but helped Amanda bargain down a bag because we taught the vendors the word "zipper" hehe, we went back to the hostel and again found ourselves on a desperate search for something edible and quick before heading to an acrobat show. We were in a hurry but I wanted dumplings so I had a brilliant stroke of genius and got it “to go”..very literally.

Jiao zi in a bag! Soy sauce and everything ;) Just add chopsticks!

We rode to the acrobat show in one of those gray big van/little bus type things that have become too familiar on vacations. The show was pretty cool but it wasn’t NEARLY as intense as I hoped it would be or as all long enough for how much we paid for it but it was still good for the Beijing experience. It’s just hard when I’ve seen more impressive things at Epcot in the Chinatown there, ya know? Still though, there were some CRAZY moments. Like this!

and they had this girl who did tricks holding herself up by one hand on a teeny stand for like 3 minutes and they had one of those big metal round cages with motorcyclists riding around inside and got FIVE of them zooming around inside. Wowzas!!

After the show we made the mistake of thinking we could get ourselves to a silk and pearl market on our own if the driver let us off near a subway station--we could just find it from there. Nope. It was not to be so-- we ended up wandering around for about 2 hours. In the process we found a cool building and I snapped a couple pics.

We realized a couple minutes later that we’d stumbled onto Tiananmen Square. Oh :) A nice little bonus but we’d have to tour it another day! The subway station was shut down there and for the next two hours we wandered the streets looking for another station, trying to hail taxis, getting directions from guards who didn't actually know what they were talking about, using one of the nastiest bathrooms ever, eventually getting all of us but Tiffany, Shaw, Amanda and I in a cab headed to the silk market, wanting to pull our hair out when the few cabs we managed to hail told us they couldn’t take us where we needed to go, needing desperately to sit down, shaking my head in disbelief when Tiffany’s pants ripped and walking down the street through the mud and some turnip-looking plants to a bus stop. In hopes of preserving any sanity I had left, I started to laugh. Good and hard. And suddenly the situation wasn’t so bad anymore! Amanda and I were giggling at the weirdest things until we made it eventually to the subway and FINALLY the market.

The source of much happiness during this trip has been the turtle face. It came out for a brief moment on this weird night. Oh the joys of being on the subway and finding any way to entertain ourselves!

FINALLY at the silk market, I plummeted in energy levels even further when all of the sudden I was bombarded by the weirdest shopping experience I think must be possible in this life. Seriously, it’s hard to describe it. Imagine Satan’s minions trying to sell you a scarf. Calling to you as you innocently walk by, telling you they’ll give it to you for a low price, even grabbing at your arm sometimes as you pass. Now imagine isles and isles of booths packed as tight as sardines in a mall-type store with everything and ANYTHING you could ever want to buy as a souvenier from China and anything you could ever want from anywhere. Scarves, pearls, jade, robes, knock-off name brand stuff from Diesel, Abercrombie, Dulce and Gabbana, Versaci—bags, jeans, shoes, jackets, ANYTHING. 4 floors of that!!! Now imagine all of these minions are Chinese.

THIS is Beijing shopping.

It’s weird because they actually speak English, unlike other places we’ve been where bartering is like a silent battle of the calculator where not much is said but emotion can be implied with how forcefully you punch in the numbers or how disgustedly you look at the price they are asking. Here it’s like a game. A battle of wits and flattery and strategy and boy, that first day it was over-whelming. By the time it closed at 9 I was confused as heck and dead on my feet. Earlier we’d planned to ride the subway to the Olympic park and as tired as we were pressed on. Until we were 2 transfers away and the subways stopped running because it was too late. We went up to the street and debated what to do. Everyone wanted to go back to the hostel for the night but Debbie, Joey and I just could not give up the dream of seeing the Bird’s Nest. With the thought of “what would an Olympian do?” we set off regardless of our aching feet and pressed forward in the direction of the stadium, while doing charades of our favorite Summer olympic sports. The song "We're Coming to America" from the Hope of America program may or may have not been sung in an epic manner at this point ;)

We came to a random little plaza park area and noticed people rollerblading. How quaint, we thought. The moment exponentially grew in coolness when we noticed there were rollerblades to be rented. OH. BOY. For 5 yuan, we were convinced easily. I admit I took no thought to what diseases might plague me later in life because of this choice but was just as admittedly relieved when I was handed 2 little plastic bags to put on my feet before strapping into the blades. Chinese people are crazy but it’s good to know there are some things even THEY know have gotta happen.

So we were psyched, rollerblading to the Bird’s Nest! How cool is that?? Until we realized the park ended without making it to the stadium and we’d have to cross the street in rented rollerblades to continue. So whether or not it was allowed we crossed the street and into the unknown. I blame Joey. After wandering down a street and under a super creepy under-pass we got as far as we could go without crossing a major highway, so the quest was over for the night. Seriously awesome photo op!

Does it get any better than this?

Another really late night dragging ourselves to the hostel totally beat but once again, we’re only here once :)

Long Vacation: Day 2

We woke up to a bright, cloudless day and wondered if some kid digging a hole to China had actually made it—because it looked as if we’d made it back to central Utah! Flat land galore and miles of powerlines. Very strange. And another hour later we were in neighborhoods of low, flat houses that reminded me of Mexico. I’ve never actually been to Mexico but if I had been, that’s what I imagine it would look like. We were on the train for a couple more hours and were anxious to arrive in Beijing. We got off at the train station and the first thing we noticed—it was DRY here! Not like our humid coastal home in Southern China! Weird to have to use chapstick again but after a couple of days I was used to it. Our party of 17 herded through the train station like cattle and in our wandering eventually found the bus station that would take us to the metro. It wasn’t until we got on in a daze and settled into the crowded bus that we noticed Anna and Erin weren’t with us..so Tiffany and Shaw went back after them. The rest of us made it to the metro station (I was excited, my first time!) and timidly tried to push our way to the subway doors. We got on a crammed subway and waited for our stop. The doors opened, most of our group got off but as two girls and I elbowed our way from the other side of the train the doors closed..and we were still on it..um..kay? We weren’t too worried but we didn’t know exactly what we were going to do. We got off at the next stop and luckily one of the girl’s sister came looking and they were on the same brain wave that she found us and we went back to the Llama temple stop to go to our hostel. Up out of the station and the first thing I notice: wow, this place LOOKS Chinese. Lanterns as far as the eye can see, Chinese-designs painted on the trim of buildings, dragons guarding the entrance to every shop. This is more of the China I’ve been expecting to see for the last 3 months! Turns out it’s a touristy-pleaser type of thing, not that I’m really surprised but it’s just an interesting discovery. We checked into our awesome hostel (Anna and Erin were found, phew!) and our minds rested on what else but FOOD.


Eating Goat! It was pretty good, I was surprised.

We went on some directionless wanderings for the rest of the night up and down the street of our hostel.

This is pretty much Beijing. Lanterns. Very artificial but still fun nonetheless :)

Five girls walking around and eventually we are going to need a bathroom. Introducing the most shocking squatter I have used thus far during my stay in China. And believe me, there has been some fierce competition. (I’ve considered making a squatter blog detailing all of the despicable places I’ve been forced to..relieve myself..but then I remember that’d be nasty and no one would want to read it, and that’s why I haven’t done it ;) )

Look closely. These squatters do not have stalls or doors. Only small walls. I've become accustomed to tolerating weird experiences, and although this one was especially awkward I will admit I used it, yes, and I felt very..exposed. That’s pretty much the only word I can use to describe it. I did NOT like having an audience; I never want to have to cover myself like that from Chinese people ever again!

Anyway……..moving on!

We heard there was a park down the street where old people danced and I’m not really sure why that appealed to us but it did so we went to find it.


Beijing at nighttime, crossing a bridge


The entrance to the old people dancing park. It ended up being kind of a waste, the old people were sure dancing but it was just a little jig for exercise, and it was dark and we were dead-beat from the day but it was mindless so we liked it. We headed back to the hostel and as I started thinking about getting ready for bed someone suggested going to a club for foreigners..so we did! How’s that for being spontaneous on a vacation? I was so tired already but I figured you’re only in China once with an opportunity to go clubbing so what the heck! It was interesting--great to hear English music but it was so stuffy and crowded that it made dancing hard. So many weird people but it was a really good time with our group.

Here's a pretty bad picture but the kid in our group who took better ones got sent home so the chances of us seeing them are pretty low. But it was fun!

We dragged our feet home before the club got too crazy and slept very heavily. In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best choice to start out the vacation like that but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do :)

Long Vacation: Day 1

I’ve decided the best way to go about blogging about this colossal vacation is to choose 5 pictures a day and just mention other details. It will be hard to show so little but it’s the only way to keep me sane and get it blogged before I go home when I will have no motivation to do it at all (at least in theory, I could surprise myself). And due to circumstances out of my control I have to learn a new teaching method and teach first grade using it for the next 2 weeks and it might just be the death of me. That’s just me complaining but it’ll be alright. It just means I have other responsibilities and 9 days of vacation are looming over my head (known across the ILP board as the infamous "Long Vacation", hope you don't mind me referring to it as such). I’m also gritting my teeth and using smaller photobucket pictures because it’s faster. Oh the things I have learned to put up with here, you have no idea. Anyway, blabbing, let’s get to it!

We had to teach that morning, so instead of worrying about teaching I kinda lost it and just started being over-enthusiastic about everything and wasted time letting them pose for pictures. I was on the brink of vacation, can you blame me?

I sure love these kids :) Sometimes they give me grief but they’re the best.

Then it was a mad hustle to catch the bus downtown to catch a bus to Guangzhou to the train station! (I ride a lot of buses here..sigh). I can’t even remember what the train station was like, other than a lot of running around like chickens with our heads cut off, hauling our luggage up long flights of stairs and just feeling perplexed and stressed about making the train.

Took a break for a photo in the station but do I look as frazzled here as I felt? I sure think so. Still though, it was my first time on a real passenger train so all stress aside, pictures must be taken!

We got into the train and da dad a da! Behold, the sleeper train! And what a glorious thing it was, 6 bunks in a cabin, this was tons cooler than the Hogwarts Express!

The climb is pretty perilous to the top bunk! We had fun exploring for the first three hours, but with a total of 21 hours on it we got pretty creative.

What did we do, you might ask? A momentary shot at entertainment that was one of the only ones documented:

Trying to perfect the one eye crossed, the other eye not thing. I was getting pretty close before the combination of a moving train and going cross-eyed started making me sick.
We had a Chinese woman on the bottom left bunk who we made friends with but once again the language barrier was a problem. We watched for the noodle cart, met a Chinese rock band, used train squatters (interesting..), watched funny Chinese reality shows and finally turned in for the night. The beds were pretty comfortable, but cool factor of sleeping on a train at all made it a lot better. Before it got dark we got some awesome country scenery shots like this. We knew that once we woke up it’d be tons different. Before Beijing we’d never traveled more than a couple of provinces away. Traveling almost the whole height of China now, we hoped it was ready for us!

I say a Beijing China!

My kid brother Jake had this funny little song he randomly started singing to the tune of that Barney song "Please and thank you, those are the magic words" that used to crack us up so bad at home. It was mostly because of the hysterical facial expressions that he'd do to go along with it but it's a real hoot. I wish I could see him do it now.

Did I ever think I'd be going to Beijing as a nineteen year old English teacher????

Never!

The Great Wall made it onto the bucket list I made about a year ago for FHE and I can't believe I'm going. Yes, I am going to Beijing, the Great Wall, the Forbidden city, and the whole She-bang. Tomorrow. Oh my heck I'm geeking out!

I was planning on blogging a lot before I went. About many things. But it's just too time-consuming sometimes to coordinate a masterpiece so I put it off and now it's vacation time. Oh well, what can I do? Go to Beijing :)

If blogging was easier I would have an awesome picture of chocolate chip cookies and write something about how a girl can't get much happier than cookie dough and Taylor swift in her PJs on a Thursday night in the kitchen. Just understand that made my day today :) Those cookie mixes from home are a much-needed, heavenly oasis sometimes our here. I think if I start a blog at home when it would just be about stuff like that --little things that make me happy :) Justin always tells me only married people have blogs and now that I'm here keeping up a China blog I can totally see how that's true. My normal life isn't exciting enough for it, I don't think!

Also, a big shout out to Daisy!!!! I will give you your honorary birthday nod when I get back but know that it's coming ;) Happy birthday, Stace Face!! I hope your day is full of happiness, balloons, cake, butterflies, fireworks, cute boys, Kristin and confetti. You are the best, Daisy Crocket :)

I'm going to ride a train tomorrow for the first time in my life besides the little Disneyland one! Woot! This whole trip is going to be a little nerve-racking-- 21 hour train ride to Beijing, 5 full days there, 11 hour sleeper bus to Xi'an, and then flying home from there. What a Chinese marathon! I'll probably never catch up with myself as far as blogs but I will sure try. I have this perfectionist problem where I need things to be creatively wonderful or I don't do it at all. And since China makes it hard I get deterred very easily. Anyway, rambling :) I'm going to blow dry my hair, finish packing, get some sleep, teach in the morning and head on my merry way to Beijing!!

I feel perfectly equipped for this trip having gone to kung fu twice this week and watching Mulan last night.

Let'sa go!


(I have just been told by Amanda that I am the jedi master of squeegeeing the bathroom floor. I think we have been here too long-- China is getting to us.)