Rachel and Beijing!

"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man" Mao Zedong

Well, if any of you have ever questioned my manhood, there is now no question to it. I'm a true man!! Or... whatever.

This past Thursday night Daniel and I caught a sleeper train to Beijing to meet up with the most wonderful Rachel Baker!! We got in Friday morning around seven and headed to our hidden hostel. Our hostel was impossible to find being in this tiny back alley (hutong) that was being constructed on and was all sorts of torn up!! Friday we found our hostel, got to see Rachel(!!!!), and headed off to explore the crazy world of Beijing. We were walking distance to Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden Palace. First, we went through the forbidden palace with the huge painting of Mao on the outside. Next we went through Jingshan Park which is just a small park, but it sits on a high hill that over looks both the city of Beijing and the entire Forbidden Palace. It has such a beautiful view! After this we went walking through a random neighborhood to find our way back to Tia'nanmen square. On the way we had our first meal altogether which consisted of Eggplant cooked with tomatoes, Fish flavored pork & veggies, and some not so good steamed dumplings. We also walked into this tiny shop ran by a woman for Tibet! I bought some presents that were made from yak bones. We finally found our way through the neighborhood back to Tian'anmen square where we just walked around for a bit and pretty much took hundreds of pictures of random Chinese people asking for us to take pictures with them, probably so they could tell their friends back home that they saw foreigners! Walking to and from these places we passed by the National Grand Theatre which is one of the coolest buildings in Beijing. Look it up! Lastly, on Friday we went to an Acrobatics show where these inhumanly flexible/ crazy daredevil Chinese people were flipping and climbing all over each other. It was so amazing!! I have tons of pictures and videos!

Saturday, we woke up crazy early and headed out with a group to the Great Wall! Rachel, Daniel, and I were the only ones out of the group to opt out of the cable cars to take you up to the top of the Great Wall meaning we climbed up forty straight minutes of stairs. FORTY MINUTES!! But, it was well worth it once we reached the top! We walked for about an hour and a half up and down our section of the Great Wall and it was so beautiful! It was really hard for me to grasp that I was standing on the Great Wall! It didn't feel real until now writing about it! We took a million pictures/ videos up on the wall! After our incredibly hard walk down the stairs we were swamped by Chinese people trying to sell their trinkets and souvenirs. Which is usually quite annoying but we turned it into quite a fun time! These two older gentleman had their booths set up next to each other and Rachel wanted a set of nice chopsticks and I had the two of them going back and forth trying to sell them to us, we were working the masters! They know a few English phrases to catch your attention but when you start bargaining with them they write the price down on a piece of paper (since they use the same numbers) and foreigners do the same and it goes back and forth. When this old man starting writing his price down on the paper after I had used some Chinese on him, I got this horrible look on my face and told him "I know, I know" in Chinese making him think he insulted me by not using Chinese! They always go a lot further down on their prices when you speak Chinese rather than using English!! (If Rachel reads this she'll maybe roll her eyes since we found something she bought for 60 yuan there somewhere else for 15!!! I can't believe they originally wanted 180 yuan for it!) After we left, we headed back to the hostel, got some needed info from the internet, and took some much needed naps! Later that night we met up and went out to eat at Outback Steakhouse! I order the Alice Springs Chicken which was a piece of chicken breast covered in mushrooms, bacon, and cheese with some honey mustard. It was the most delicious flavorful thing that has passed between my lips in months! Completely not meaning to be dramatic I would close my eyes and just absorb the taste! It was amazing! They also served a small warm loaf of wheat bread. SO GOOD! Amazing Rachel picked up the bill which was crazy because western food is quite expensive in China! Pretty much all the faces there were white faces. Speaking of, I now understand why the Chinese stare at me so much because after living here for only around ten weeks, I was overwhelmed by all the foreigners in Beijing! I was constantly pointing them out!! "Wow, look at those foreigners!!" and simply saying "FOREIGNERS!" That's so sad! After Outback we walked around the walking street (a street for shopping, no cars are allowed, it's usually really nice expensive stuff) we found a bookstore that was completely foreign books! I bought a book for myself! I'm really excited to read it! Walking back to our hostel we stopped, sat near, and just looked at the National Grand Theater because it's quite a spectacular view at night with it's random light lite up on it. It looks like the stars in heaven, stars that we rarely get to see here.

Sunday morning we got up and went to a meeting they hold in a restaurant. Everything was pretty much in Chinese so it was a little difficult to stay awake given the full weekend we had and I had nothing to concentrate on! Afterwards we ate lunch with them and had some amazing conversations with one of the couples that are living in Beijing, they had some really inspiring and encouraging things to say! I also got to meet Jane, a friend of a friend whom I had just been told about a few days beforehand! After our meeting Rachel, Daniel, me, and a new Chinese friend, Zhou all went to the Olympic park to see the sights and take some pictures and then we all went to the heavenly temple which was such a great sight to see!!! We hustled back to our hostel had a few minutes to sit and chat, we ate some dinner there, then Daniel and I grabbed our bags and left to catch our 9 o'clock train that night!! We made it back into Wuhan at 7 in the morning and both had 10 o'clock classes to teach!

Great things that happened that I forgot to write about!
1. The three of us hung out in this young man's tea shop looking around, smelling teas, tasting teas, shopping, and just trying to have some conversation with him. With his small English vocabulary and my small Chinese vocabulary we managed to have a decent strand of conversation! I would use as much Chinese as I could inserting an English word or two and definitely using body language and he would understand and do the same back! I knew where he was from, that tea isn't grown close to Beijing but only back closer to his home, he told me about his father, I bought some tea, I learned that they own two tea shops and he runs that one, I told him what we were doing there. It was encouraging to use my small amount of Chinese!

2. My English is degrading quickly. I like to blame it on me being tired all weekend but Rachel kept getting a kick out of my horrible horrible broken English! I kept using wrong words, wrong tenses, etc! Quite embarrassing!

3. The night we just stopped, sat, and stared at the starry-heaven building, it was quite cold, and after sitting for maybe thirty minutes we stood up and had a hard time walking with numb booties!

4. Having Rachel in China and getting to see her and hang out with her was amazing! It helped to relieve my wanting to see my family!