Travel and Beijing

July 15

Sorry I wasn’t able to blog yesterday… it was a really busy day. We pretty much spent the whole day traveling, nonstop.

We had to take a 5 hour bus ride from Chenzhou to Changsha for the airport, where we’d take a 3 hour plane ride to Beijing. We were told the night before that we were going to leave fairly early (earlier than we’d planned) because of the weather conditions in Changsha because it was going to be rainy. Once we woke up in the morning and got down by the bus we weren’t able to leave because someone had stolen our bus’ battery. So, we ended up waking up early to leave late. Haha. Our bus ride was very interesting. Bumpy… and there was lots of weaving between lanes to get to our destination faster. It’s funny because you rarely see cars on the interstate, they’re mostly buses or large trucks carrying cargo. But I slept most of the way… it was a pretty uneventful ride. We stopped along the way for lunch, and it was not a very pleasant restaurant. The bathroom (or washroom as they call them here) was terrible… it was like three stalls (without the actual doors) in a row of squatty potties, and it didn’t smell too great. After the lunch we went to the airport and flew to Beijing.

Once we got to Beijing it was late, but none of us were hungry, so we just got situated in our room. Some of us went to the market (Elyssa, Charlie, Molli, Carissa, Lily and I) to look around and buy some stuff to hold us off the rest of the trip. The market was interesting, and we found some good snacks. We bought some really good oreos…. Some were filled with strawberry filling, some ice cream, some peanut butter/chocolate, and some were some green tea flavor… very interesting stuff. After the market we just went back to the hotel and went to bed.

This morning we decided that we’d go to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and a few markets. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the Forbidden City. We took a fairly quick tour… unfortunately it is very foggy here and cloudy because we had some light showers later on in the day… so pictures weren’t all that great. We drove over to Tiananmen Square and walked around a bit. Since the Olympics they put up screens playing some video right in front of Mao’s tomb… which is very strange. But we walked around the other side to see them. Right as we were leaving it started to rain, so that worked out perfectly for us.

We went and did some shopping in the Silk Market. When we told the salesmen that we were looking for bags they went and told us to come into their back room… and they had a bunch of stuff. Our guide found us later and she thought that it was the craziest thing…. like, she’d never seen that before and she’d been there tons of times. She was going crazy! Sadly enough she didn’t get the idea of bargaining, so she didn’t help us out much when it came to us trying to buy things. We quickly found out that Deena was a pro at it though, so we stuck close to her.

We went out to lunch for a quick bite, but after that we went back and did some shopping at a different market. It was insane all the bags and stuff they had at this market. All the sales people were so pushy though… some lady seriously grabbed my arm as hard as she could, and wouldn’t let go unless I looked at her stuff… Charlie had to come and pull me away from her. It sorta freaked me out. Haha. They are very persistent people. But soon Charlie, Elyssa, and I soon found ourselves becoming very good at bargaining… and it was actually pretty exciting to do it. We got some pretty good stuff today:).

After the market we came back to the hotel, played a few card games and then went out to eat dinner. We had Peking duck today, which made me very happy. I was hoping we’d be able to get some while we were there. We came back to the hotel and Deena, Katie, and Susan were going to go out and see the town with Susan’s friend Summer who she’d housed for a few years while she studied abroad in America. Elyssa came into our room and we hung out for a bit, then went and watched some movies in Carissa’s room.

We’ve been pretty laid back the past few days. Tomorrow we’re going to go to the Great Wall and the Jade Factory… and I think we’re all going to stay up (hopefully) all night so that we can sleep on the airplane the next day. We’ll see how that one turns out…. But it’s late now and we’re getting up bright and early to get to the Great Wall when it opens tomorrow, so I’m going to bed. Goodnight!