November 9th 2008

Not much has been going on here. It's been super busy, but not really exciting. Zach and I got our schedules changed around for the zillionth time, but at least now we only teach English Nursing students who actually want to learn English and for the most part, speak it reasonably well. Our schedules haven't changed, they just made some of our classes smaller, which is nice.

I guess one exciting thing has happened in the last few weeks. A bunch of us dressed up on Halloween and went to the OK Bar for some drinks looking pretty rediculous (me as a cheerleader, Zach as English Man, Matt as Fidel Castro, Megan as a cat, Chris as Justin Timberlake, and Jimmy and Lotus as basketball stars). We had already been there for a while when suddenly two foreign guys walked into the bar! We stared at them and they stared at us for a few seconds before Zach and I looked at each other and said "foreigners!" and went over to talk to them. It turns out that Adam and Ramtin were on a humanitarian mission here in Chengde for a few days repairing cleft palates at Chengde North Hospital. They were really cool guys who hung out with us for the rest of the night, including the 3 AM pitt stop at McPerkins. And the poor guys had to be up by 5:30 to go to the hospital! We wound up hanging out with them the rest of the week, going with Ram to Mountain Resort, having drinks with Ram and Adam, hanging out with the other doctors on the mission, going to multiple KTVs, and spending a lot of time at the OK Bar (they really love us there). We gave all the doctors their first taste of Baijou, which they thought was...interesting. I wish we would have had more time to hang out with them. They were a fun group. Mostly from California, where a Rotary club raised the money for them to go. Adam and the anesthesiologist, Allen, and three from Canada were the only people not from Cali. Adam was from Philly, Allen was from Phoenix, and as mentioned before, the others were from Canada.

Funny story about Adam and Ram: the night of Halloween, the guys hadn't been in Chengde for very long, so they didn't know the city very well. We passed their hotel on the way to McDonalds, but it was almost four when they headed back. They apparently couldn't remember how to get back to their hotel, so they hailed a cab. They got in and showed the driver the card for Chengde Binguan. The cabby laughed and literally drove them around the corner to their hotel! They were two blocks from home! We had a good laugh about that one. Luckily, I think they got the one honest cabby in the city who only charged them 2 qui for the ride instead of the normal rate of 5 qui or the American rate of 10 qui.

Zach and I have started coming up with a "You know you've been in China too long when..." list. It starts off with "...when you stop and stare at foreigners as much as the Chinese do." It's funny how being foreign is reason enough to strike up a conversation with someone in the supermarket, which is how we met Dave from the Rotoplast mission, who we later found out was Ram and Adam on the same trip, and who has some...interesting...stories. You'll have to ask if you want to know.

Anyhoo, I'm going to hope my internet comes on soon so I can post. It hasn't been working for the last four days and I'm going CRAZY!

This is a video of Zach showing off his Kung Fu skills one drunken night at the KTV with the comfort girls looking on...

October 18th, 2008

Grrr! I'm really confused about this election. I've watched all the debates, and now I feel more confused than ever. Do I vote for the Republican whom I don't agree with on the subject of the economy but agree on Foreign Policy and hate the VP (who scares me, actually), or do I go with the Democrat, whose FP scares me but whose economic plan seems more palatable. At least I like the choice of VP. Grrr!

But enough of that. it's been an exciting past few weeks. Mr. Lei took us to Hammer Hill and Frog Rock last weekend, which was gorgeous! The fall colors were starting to emerge and it was sunny with temps in the mid-seventies. It makes me glad I'm in Chengde.

Kirk came to visit us this week and that was a lot of fun. We went to a banquet for lunch (we had no idea it was a banquet, we thought it was just a lunch), and then took Kirk to the school where he sat in on one of our classes. We wanted to introduce him to Mr. Lei, but he left before we got out of clas. We then went out to dinner at Serena's BBQ (AMAZING!) and then got dessert at the western restaraunt before heading to the KTV for some karaoke! So much fun! I can't wait for people to come visit.

We decided to go to OK Bar for Jimmy's birthday last weekend and we met some really cool people there. There was an American visiting from Pennsylvania and was travelling with his Chinese friend from Beijing. Mike Li (the Chinese guy) spoke very good English, as he apparently has relatives in Alabama. We sat and drank with them for a while, and the next time we go to Beijing we will call him to show us a good time. Exciting!

Beijing Days 7&8

We were supposed to go to the Great Wall, but I really wasn't feeling up to climbing around on a bunch of stairs when I had a horrible head cold with a splitting headache and barely being able to breathe. I decided to stay in the room while Zach went and ran errands. He was totally a good friend and got me soup and watched movies with me.

That evening, after napping and recovering, we ventured over to Wangfujing for some Outback Steakhouse. It was EXPENSIVE (230 qui per person). But it was worth it for the blooming onion, potato soup, and steak and mashed potatoes. We also made another stop at the pirated DVD shop for some more movies. When we got back, we went out for tea with our Spanish friend, Barbara, and sat and talked for three hours. It was so much fun!

Day 8

5:30 wake up call for the 6:30 train back to Chengde. Ass crack of dawn if you ask me.

Beijing Day 6

Bright and early the next morning (10 am), we met the four Shizz kids at Tian'an Men square because we were going to try to see Chairman Mao in his Mausoleum. Unfortunately, we discovered the Mausoleum is closed during National Holiday. BOO. I guess they don't want too many people traipsing past Mao's embalmed boy. Amusingly, while we were waiting for the Shizz kids, Zach and I were bombarded by people wanting their pictures taken with foreigners. We need to start charging a fee. Twenty qui to have your picture taken with us. Even the adults were doing it.

After Tian'an Men, we all got on the bus and headed off to Olympic Green to see the olympic venues. We got there only to find out it was 50 qui to get onto the grounds! No way were we going to pay that much just to walk around. So we took a few pictures from behind the fence and took a cab to the Shizz kids' hostel and went to Hooters for lunch. It's just like the Hooters everywhere else (amazing, I know). Overpriced food that is OK. I wound up getting Chili fries and wings, and I was STUFFED. I hate to say it, but the poor Hooters girls only had 'skeeter bites with a lot of padding...

Zach and I left the Shizz kids at their hostel to take a nap while we went to the silk market. Silk market is truly an overwhelming place. Seven floors of booths where people try to sell you things. And they do ANYTHING to make the sale. Yell, grab, block, insult, redirect, and just about any other method possible. I made out ok, only spending about 600 qui on a winter North Face jacket, two belts, two shirts, and some silk. Zach was not so lucky and wound up buying a bunch of knockoff coach bags for his mom and sister, setting him back about 2000 qui. Silk market is definitely not the place to be when you are sick, so after Zach bought the purses, we decided it was best we leave. I would like to go back the next time we are in Beijing and get a knockoff Diesel bag I saw and some knockoff Abercrombie clothes.

We were supposed to meet up with the Shizz kids again for drinks, but I was really feeling to sick to do anything else, so Zach and I went home.

Beijing Day 5

National Holiday. Zach and I decided to go to Summer Palace for the day to check out what it was like. We should have stayed home. Not that it wasn't beautiful and we didn't enjoy the scenery, temples, and buildings, it was just waaaaaaaaaay too crowded. National Holiday is not the day to go to a national tourist spot. Everybody and their aunt was there. Out of the 100 or so pictures I took, two did not have a mass of people in them. And I thought the Forbidden City was crowded! And to top it off, when we got tired and decided to leave, the exit gate does not tell you how to get back to where your bus drops you off! So Zach and I wandered around for a half hour trying to find the front gate. When we got there, there was a HUGE line for the bus. The best part was that when a bus would come, all the people in the front would shove their way onto the bus, and all the people from the back would run to the front to try and get on. We were stuck in the middle. When we tried going to the front, we were told to get back in line. And to make it better, I was starting to come down with a really bad head cold. I was not in a good mood.

To console ourselves after we got back, we decided to go to Papa John's for dinner. Papa John's! It was awesome pizza for being in China, and it even had garlic sauce. Zach and I joked that we got Cheese Pizza and Cheesy Bread, which is cheese pizza without sauce. Way to have a variety... We also had this little drink that was Sprite with a scoop of strawberry ice cream on top. It was pretty good.

After dinner, we met up with some of the people from Shijiajuang (also known as The Shizz). We met Willie, Kara, Billie, and Alyssa at Suzy Q's on bar street in Beijing. We didn't actually go in because they don't allow flip-flops and two of the girls were wearing them. We decided to go to a random bar and have a drink. Once inside, we were excited to find they had a hookah! So we ordered a hookah and sat around shooting the breeze for an hour or so while we smoked it. Once it was finished, we decided to get some beers at a market. Lo and behold, the market was a western one and had all western food in it! And everything was in English, too! They had cheese, cereal, avocados, mexican food, chips, cream cheese, mac and cheese, alcohol, coke, gummy bears, and a host of other things. Of course it was all MONDO expensive. A box of cereal was 60 qui (10 USD). I satisfied myself with a cheap Chinese beer and a box of mac and cheese. After we drank our beer, we headed over to teh area by the Shizz kids' hostel and tried to find another bar to go to. We kind of lost interest though, and I was really starting to feel sick by this time. Kara had already left because she wasn't feeling well, and we decided to part ways after making plans for the next day.

Beijing Day 4

Zach and I (after lazing about the hotel all morning) decided to head to the Forbidden City again for a second try. But first, before doing anything else, we ran down to the train station to get trian tickets for the return journey. Luckily, we happend to get behind this girl and her mother, and the girl was an American Journalist who had been in China for two years and spoke fluent Chinese! She was extremely nice and helped us get our train tickets. Unfortunately, she and her mother were unable to get tickets because the train they wanted was full. I wish we could get together with her, but I didn't have my phone and she hasn't emailed us.

Once back, we made a quick stop at Gate Tower, which had a wonderful little museum about the Beijing Wall and Five Archways street. As for our trip to The Forbidden City, this time we decided to visit a few more of the museums. It is truly awe-inspiring to be in rooms with thins that are that old. We visited The Museum of Precious China, which held truly beautiful craftsmanship, saw museums dedicated to the guards, the emperors, the concubines, and many others. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the Hall of the Clocks because they were closing the city. Once again, we didn't have enough time to get through what we wanted to at the Forbidden City. We still need to see the Imperial Gardens.

We did have our first run-in with the Chinese Police (and Paul thought he would be the first, ha). There were a few policemen fooling around with their hats off and having fun, so Zach and I tried to sneak some pictures. Well the guards noticed, and so they sent an english-speaking policeman to come find us and erase the pictures of the guards from our cameras. Boo.

On our way out, apparently the security guards decided to exhert their control again by not letting us exit through the front gate. Instead, we got rerouted a half-hour out of our way around the outer walls of the Forbidden City and putting us on Wangfujing Dajie (the place where the Pizza Hut is). On the way, we stumbled across thre awesome things: 1) a little shop that sells cheap, pirated DVDs that look real (I bought 2), 2) Subway, where we stopped for dinner, and 3) the barbeque street where you can get odd things to eat like Starfish, centipede, scorpion, dog, and just about anything else. It was pretty exciting. We've now deemed Wangfujing Dajie "Western Street" because it's where you find all of the Western stores; Armani, Cartier's, Pizza Hut, Haagen Daas, Outback Steakhouse... We almost ate Starfish, but I was too full to eat anything and Zach was repulsed by the smell. Maybe next time... We decided to head home and watch some of our new movies.

Later that night, we had a craving for McDonalds, so we decided to head over. We were on our way out the door to the hotel when we noticed two women arguing with the girl at the front desk. The older one turned to us and asked us if we spoke English and asked if we could help hem. It turned out that they had just arrived from Guilin and their key wasn't working. They got the misunderstanding cleared up soon after we stopped to help, but these poor women were having the trip from hell! I don't remember everything, but what I do remember is that they were supposed to fly from Guilin to Xi'an, but their flight was inexplicably cancelled. So they wound up taking the 27 hour train ride from Guilin to Beijing hard-seat, standing room only. They sat in the dining car the whole time, but had to pay 30-50 qui every few hours to stay in there. No wonder they were frantic! We were supposed to go with them to the Summer Palace the next day, but on the way to the bank, the mother tripped and fell and hurt her hip! They wound up taking a rickshaw tour of the hutongs. Poor women!

Beijing Day 3

We were pretty tired from the previous two days, so we decided to be lazy and hang around the hotel. We didn't actually get up and moving until late in the afternoon.

Zach and I tried finding some hutongs on foot because we didn't want to take a rickshaw. Not only were we too cheap to do that, but we were really getting sick of the rickshaw drivers yelling "hello!" at us and following us around trying to get us to rent them. It happens about every block in Beijing. I think we did find a hutong, but it wasn't much to look at. We'll have to break down and take a rickshaw next time. On our way back, we wound up taking a sidestreet that lead off of Five Archways Street. We discovered the oldest silk market in Beijing, where I bought two yards of silk, and Zach spent 900 qui on having a silk jacket made for him. Then we stumbled upon a tea shop where a worker sat us down to sample some fine teas. Of course, even the cheap ones were expensive! I wonder what the 2000 qui tea tastes like... It must be like drinking liquid gold. I bought a cute tea set, three really good teas, and some realy good snacks to go with it. It's now my special occasion tea.

That night, we decided to try and find Pizza Hut, which we had been craving for some time. We headed down towards The Forbidden City, and randomly chose a direction to head in. We passed the Grand Hotel Beijing (affectionately deemed the Michael Phelps Hotel because we like to pretend thats where he stayed in Beijing), and Zach had the idea that we should go in and pretend to be patrons asking for directions. The concierge went above and beyond getting the directions for us. He drew us a map and called the Pizza Hut to make sure he was sending us to the right place. We easily found the Pizza Hut (with a quick stop at a DVD shop) and had scrumptious stuffed crust meat lovers (unfortunately for Zach, who had to break Kosher) pizza with drinks. The Pizza Hut happened to be located on the most western street in Beijing (Wangfujing), having a foreign language bookstore, Cartier's, Coach, Outback Steakhouse, and a bunch of other Western Shops. We stopped for some sorbet on the way home (16 qui for one tiny scoop!) and headed home.

Beijing Day 2

Zach and I grabbed our bags and checked out of our hotel by 9:30 am. We tried to get a cab to take us to our new hotel, but we'd made the mistake of not writing down the name of the hotel we were going to stay at. We wound up hoofing it the 1.5 miles to Tian'an Men and the hotel because whenever we tried to tell a cab we wanted to go to Tian'an Men, the thought we wanted a tour.

After checking into our hotel (which we found out that they were showing us a more expensive room, but Zach got them down to the price we thought they were asking), we decided to venture out. We explored Tian'an Men for a while, looking at the sculptures of the Olympic Mascots, then decided to head to the Forbidden City. We discovered, to our surprise, our ISIC's got us into the Forbidden City for 20 qui, as opposed ot the 60 qui it normally takes. That card paid for itself in Beijing alone.

The Forbidden City is, in one word, AMAZING. We spent two days in there and didn't even make it through half of the city. The first day we stopped and saw the Hall of Art and Calligraphy, which was incredibly awe inspiring. I can't imagine making art like that. Such detail, and some of the scrolls only showed about 8 feet of their full length. There was a poem on dark wood panels that was carved in Jade. You'll just have to look at my pictures to get the full effect of the Forbidden City. The awesome thing? The Chinese have no compunctions about letting you take pictures or video. Snap away! (As long as there are no police in the picture).

For dinner, we decided that because we were so tired, we would just walk to McDonalds for dinner and call it an early night.

Beijing Day 1

So it's about time I sat down and wrote about our trip to Beijing, so here it goes. It's a really long entry, so there will be an individual entry for each day.

Zach and I set out for Beijing on the 1:30 train, arriving in Beijing around 6:30. We made the unfortunate mistake of not making hotel/hostel reservations before we got there. We wound up wandering around Beijing for 2 hours with our heavy backpacks looking for a place to stay. Realizing we weren't going to find anything cheap the later we went, we decidied to drop our bags at a hotel that had an opening and go on from there. We were both really tired, and about a hairsbreath away from saying screw it, we're going back to Chengde. We stayed at some 3 Star hotel that was 600 qui per night (100USD). Once we dropped our bags, we decided to explore a bit and maybe get a bite to eat. We found a Dairy Queen and got ice cream, then randomly stumbled across Tian'an Men square! Yay for random finds! We had trouble finding the actual square because it was roped off and hidden behind Mao's Mausoleum (we didn't know that was what it was until a few days later). So we wandered around, losing ourselves in the underpasses for a while, explaring places we later discovered were Gate Tower and Arrow Tower, some of the last remnents of the Beijing Wall. We also discovered Five Archways street (we discovered the name when we went on a tour of the guard tower). It's this awesome little collection of empty shops that are eventually going to be a replica of the old Five Archways Street, a street of master-craftsman workers during the Ming Dynasty. there is a side street that we found later that is full of replicated shops, but we'll talk about that later.

Once we'd had our fill of Tian'an Men and Five archways, we headed back. Along the way we discovered a small hotel with quaint rooms for 300 qui a night, and we promised to return the next day to book. We stopped at a McDonalds on the way home to kick off our week of Western Only food. Sleep came easily that night.