First morning back in China. Back in the city of my birth
and to my grandparents… it’s currently 7:35am, and I just heard a rooster crow.
The plane ride was relatively smooth, except the dude who was next to me kept
on snoring. And all the Chinese guys kept on asking for rounds of beer…AGAIN.
Oh, and not to mention a middle-aged Chinese lady kept on asking for rum….to go
with her coke. Needless to say, she had the severe case of the Asian glow
during the ride. I struck up with a
conversation with a guy from Michigan, who is going to Taizhou (near Shanghai)
to teach English for a year. Rare to find someone who wants to go to Russia
just as badly as I do. I got both of us through customs and find our next leg
of journey. Since both of us were taking Air China, I got checked in and told
him to go this place to get checked in the next day. He had a long layover – 15
hours. Afterwards, we sat down at Costa Coffee and had a much needed
double-shot espresso.
So, I was just handed to what I thought was a scarf. Turns
out to be fur…fox fur to be exact. At first I thought it was fake fur,
something to play with. It was actually real fox fur… @_@ I’m actually pretty
against real fur…..although I don’t think I’ve ever touched a dead animal---
makes me feel like Cruella De Ville. Apparently, my grandmother thought my
sister would love it, which is probably true…except now I’m wondering if I can
actually carry it with me on the plane. I can just imagine the conversation
now:
Going through security….
Security dude: “Er….huh….there’s
something mysterious looking in that luggage…..
WHO’S BAG IS THIS?”
Me: “Er, that would be mine….”
SD: “There’s something in your luggage that looks like……A
DEAD ANIMAL?”
Me: “……”
SD: “Can you open your bag please?”
Me: “Sure”
*Opens bag….and promptly tossing the fox fur at him to scare
the crap out of him….
---ends convo----
Right, anyways. Since I’m only spending one day in my
hometown, I’m going to make the most of it. Might as well not be sleeping
tonight, since I’ll probably be spending time with my cousin (and because we
love scaring the crap out of each other). Great sisterly bond, eh? I still
remember that conversation I had with her…
Cousin: “Hey…so I was wondering….”
Me: “…yes?”
Cousin: “When are you getting boyfriend/husband?”
Me: “…… uh. What?”
Cousin: “Yeah, I really want a brother-in-law”
Me: “….”
I’m actually pretty excited about this nonproliferation
program in Beijing. I head off to Beijing tomorrow morning, and my aunt and
uncle will be picking me up from the airport. My aunt is taking me to get a
facial J. Can’t
say no to that! So I’ll be meeting up with the rest of my classmates tomorrow
evening. They will be all suffering from jetlag….and I’ll be comfortably not
suffering from jetlag…OR NOT. I was looking forward to sleeping on the plane –
and I did, but apparently, I need a lot more sleep than that to overcome my
sleep deprivation. This is going to be so much fun when I get back to Monterey
--- THE DAY BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS.
It’s actually snowing lightly here….. and there’s still
frozen snow on the ground. Kind of cool, eh? Cold, yes, but nothing I’m not
used to.
On finishing my last trip to China last year, I did say,
cheers to the next voyage. Well, here it is ---- May God grant this trip to be
fulfilling, full of learning, and fun things. I also hope that all of us will
be healthy and safe.
March 17th: So, I was supposed to get on the plane at 8h30 for Beijing and get there around 9h35, except our flight was delayed until further notice because of fog in both cities. Then one by one, they cancelled all flights to Beijing for the day except ours. So, another girl going to Canada and I feared that we would never leave, so we ended up taking a taxi to the train station and getting extremely lucky to find someone who helped us buy tickets and get on that train. It took 5 hours to get to the Beijing and my generous uncle and aunt came to pick me up. We had dinner and finally got to my hotel.
March 17th: So, I was supposed to get on the plane at 8h30 for Beijing and get there around 9h35, except our flight was delayed until further notice because of fog in both cities. Then one by one, they cancelled all flights to Beijing for the day except ours. So, another girl going to Canada and I feared that we would never leave, so we ended up taking a taxi to the train station and getting extremely lucky to find someone who helped us buy tickets and get on that train. It took 5 hours to get to the Beijing and my generous uncle and aunt came to pick me up. We had dinner and finally got to my hotel.
Beijing in the snow
What a way to wake up this morning at 4am, still jet lagged and waiting for the sun to rise. Instead, I opted for some further bedtime and listened to music, as my roommate hasn’t arrived yet. Finally 2 hours later, I got up, got ready, got a call from my professor about breakfast and went to meet her and Angelica for breakfast! Oh, and apparently it snowed last night. I got to see Beijing blanketed in white snow; beautiful, light layer of snow, even the trees were covered in the cold flakes. At 7am, we went to KFC for their awesome, delicious breakfast. I spent a grand total of 17RMB on soymilk, porridge, fried dough, and egg tart. It was delicious. And after that, we stopped by a street vendor and bought some buns!
I almost ran a bit late after getting back to our hotel since everyone was supposed to meet downstairs at 8:30am. Although we had gotten back at 8am, I got caught up watching a super old Jackie Chan movie. After everyone convened downstairs in the lobby, we all gotten on the bus and started our adventure. The driver dropped us off near a Christian Church to meet another teacher who was Professor Dai’s classmate. The place we met was called Qianmen Tianjie. The teacher told us the point of meeting there was to show us the mixture of modern and traditional Beijing. Walking from Tianjie to the actual Qianmen, some of us were enticed by the street vendors selling Tang hulu (Sugared Hawberries). As we got closer to Qianmen, some of us also stopped by starbucks and had some much needed caffeine. I opted for a double-shot espresso, since caffeine makes me go to the bathroom like crazy.
Tim, being his usual crazy self
Tourist-ing
The trip through Qianmen led us to Tiananmen Square where some of us wanted to see Mao’s embalmed body, but they weren’t opened. The larger-than-life Mao portrait hung at the center of the building in the Tiananmen Square staring at the bunch of foreign people gracing him with our presence. We all did the tourist dance around the Tiananmen square and headed to the Forbidden Palace. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the palace but I do remember it. We entered the one of the biggest squares in the palace just before the Taiheguan. The paved streets are very intricate designed to hinder assassins from digging a hole from outside into the palace. The Taiheguan is used only about 3 times; once during the ascension of a new emperor, the emperor’s birthday and the emperor’s wedding. A bunch of us wandered off by ourselves because we keep losing our group. Luckily, I have a cell phone so we had contact with our professor so we were able to always get together. Although I had visited the palace before, having someone actually tell you the history without reading about it was kind of refreshing and I learned a lot more to add to my collection of knowledge on the Forbidden palace. Oh, and it was funny to walk around the city with foreign students. One Chinese guy accidently bumped into me and said “ sorry” in English. I looked at him and said, “ it’s ok” in Chinese. He was surprised and said he thought I was a foreigner. I was like, are you kidding me? Don’t I look Chinese to you? He said it was because I was with a bunch of Americans, so he mistook me for a foreigner. If I could make my face like this @___@, I would do it. Also, many people thought it was funny that Americans can speak Chinese. One would have thought that encounters with so many foreigners especially in a big city like Beijing, many Chinese people would get used it. But I guess one shouldn’t have so many expectations despite the fact that this is the country of my birth.
After exiting the palace through the Shenwumen, we went off on an epic search for lunch.
Lunch was an epic affair, in which we had spent 74 RMB for 4 people, we went to the hutongs, finally separating to meet at Gulou street at 5pm. Some of us went shopping and I picked up a few small things for my friends and myself. By the time it got closer to 5, most of us were cold and tired but definitely not hungry because there were so many street vendors that a few others and I couldn’t resist ourselves. I had so much food today that I possibly can’t stomach any more, much less dinner.
When all of us reunited at 5pm the Professors gave us 3 options; first was to go to the Bird’s Nest and the Water cube and actually see it. The second option was to pass by it by car and then go back to the hotel. The last option was just going straight back to the hotel. Most of us opted for the second option because we were just too tired to walk but wanted to see more of Beijing. Finally, we got back around 6:30pm. My roommate and I went straight upstairs and jumped on our beds. And now she’s taking a shower while I catch up on my blog posts. An epic first day. Tomorrow, we officially start our program. I hope that everyday is going to be filled with new things to learn, unexpected things to happen (good things of course) and challenges for me handle.
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