Green Tea Oreos

For my culture class we’re reading a book called Rickshaw that describes a man’s life as a rickshaw puller. The book takes place in Beijing and mentions many places we’ve been to ourselves.  And coincidentally (probably not really) we had a Hutong tour Thursday with rickshaws. These rickshaws were a bit of an upgrade compared to the one in the book – they are now bikes whereas they used to be just a man pulling the rickshaw. Hutong in chinese means alleyway. Hutongs kind of remind me of a maze with little roads everywhere and the traditional style houses all next to each other.

I have a goal to one day sit on a little table outside a restaurant and eat my dinner...but it's getting cold so I'm not sure how likely that is to happen.

We stopped at one of these traditional style houses part way through the tour. The guy who lives there was explaining to us the different houses (where the parents live, and then what son lives in what house) and then decided to casually mention how this particular place was being used to film a TV show. Say WHAT?!  They showed us the scripts/schedule for the show and explained how they fixed up certain areas of the house just for the show.  I have no idea what show they were filming there, but it was a cool surprise!

This is the guy that lives there.

Schedule/script for the show.

I specifically took this picture for you, Dad - Snoopy!

A Dominos opened up by our school. There was a whole celebration the opening day with mascots, a red carpet, balloons, fireworks, and of course a discount. I think our whole school got a pizza at some point. The pepperoni pizza tasted pretty similar, but I don't plan on going back anytime soon.

My roommate and I decided to spend some quality time together by buying all the oreo flavors available and try one of each. We may have felt a bit sick afterwards…especially after eating the nasty flavors such as grape/peach, raspberry, green tea, and peanut butter. The ones that we liked were the normal flavors.... of course.

Sunday night I met with Susie again but this time she brought her family friend along. He’s 28 and they’ve known each other since they were little. His English is very impressive! We went to a Japanese restaurant, Coldstone, then sat at a bar for awhile.  I ended up finding out that he works as an assistant for a famous Asian actor that is like the equivalent of Jackie Chan! He has been all over the world working for this guy managing his meetings and having dinner with people like Leonardo Dicaprio. It was such a fun and relaxing night!

Chengde

This weekend we went to Chengde! Chengde is just outside of Beijing where the Emperor would go to escape the summer heat. Unfortunately we were not escaping the heat as it's October, but instead we went into the cold. Saturday we saw the Emperor's resort and Sunday we went to Sledge Hammer Peak to check out the giant rock.

The wood is a special type that has a strong smell and is supposed to last forever

Emperor's seat

Empress Cixi

This was a sign in our hotel - too cute!

And there's the rock.

I didn't climb all the way to the Sledge Hammer rock because I had a bit of a "pollution cold" and wasn't feeling the giant staircase up to it so instead I went and saw the Frog Rock (below). I still don't see how it looks like a frog...

This weekend I was also able to meet with my friend Susie! The last time I saw her was in the beginning of the semester when we both didn't have school. She's preparing for the SAT now and so it's difficult to find times to meet with our busy study schedules. She's learning 400 English words a day! We went for lunch and she was using her new vocabulary words and honestly, I wasn't even sure what half of them meant! 

This is pigeon. It was actually really good! 

Not everything we had is in this picture, but I had chicken feet (which is VERY difficult to eat because you have to put the whole foot in your mouth and then use your tongue to separate the bones), pigs feet, shrimp dumplings, spring rolls, mango nectar, egg tarts, beef pastries, etc.)

Later we went for a walk around the streets and got these giant drinks. They're freshly prepared and too good to share!

Last Monday night at Bible study someone mentioned seeing a shirt that said "Life is like a bicycle". I found it funny because when you hear that you're like "what?!" But the Chinese people didn't find it funny and knew exactly what it was referring to. Turns out it does correlate a bit with the Bible, but also with a Chinese proverb meaning that you need to continue to move forward with your life because if you stand still you will fall. Huh. The little quote I have as a subtitle for this blog sounds a lot like that - what a coincidence. 

Back To School

This week it was back to the books. It was fairly difficult for me to get used to waking up early (7:30) again and having to do homework, but I was happy to see my classmates! Because the majority of my classmates are Korean I hear a lot of Korean throughout the day. Sometimes I feel like I’m learning more Korean than Chinese. I sit in the middle of Ma and Song Ye Eun (I can’t pronounce the rest of Ma’s name so she lets me call her just “Ma”) and they talk over me during class enough that I’ve picked up phrases and know how to respond to them sometimes. It’s really fun to see their reaction to me understanding them. Friday night we all went out to Tube Station to eat the biggest pizza in Beijing! I am not the class leader but I basically organized the evening because I had been there before and knew how to get there. I have to admit, it felt very strange leading Koreans, English, Turkish, and Italians through Beijing. But we made it there without getting lost!

This weekend a few of us also went to our professors house for apple pie again. It may take about a hour and a half to get to their house but when American food is the reward there is no question about going. They’re doing some work on the subway so one of the lines was down which resulted in a bit of a jam for us. We’re used to people, but not this many people.

Our Thursday outing was to the Summer Palace. When I came two years ago we visited the Summer Palace, but this time I saw a completely different side of it. There’s a giant duck floating around China right now as an art piece. I guess it started in Amsterdam and has been around the world – it was in Hong Kong this summer – and now is at the Summer Palce. So as soon as we heard it was there we headed toward it. We actually had seen it when we climbed Xiang Shan, but we didn’t know that it was at somewhere we were going to!

There were giant duck stickers on the ground pointing you toward it.

These are all the buildings we saw as we tried to find the duck

….And the duck was deflated that day because it was so windy…

It was the perfect day to visit the Summer Palace! The weather was gorgeous and had just enough chill to be comfortable. The wind was unfortunate, but at least we were by the water and not back at school where dirt and dust was flying everywhere.

Mom, I see street cleaners a lot and think of you every time.

They’re repairing the sidewalk and road by our street. The sidewalk had seemed perfectly fine before so we asked our language partners (Chinese students at CNU – each of us has one and we meet once a week) why they were repairing it. They said that they were doing it to make it safer for the blind. There’s the normal sidewalk, but down the middle there are tiles that are bright yellow (like the blind will see that) and have different ridges in them (that makes sense). It’s interesting because the sidewalk is almost done and we can barely tell a difference, except that it is a bit straighter now.

A few blog posts ago I mentioned joining the ping pong club at CNU. I have now decided that this ping pong club does not exist. I have gone every single Thursday and Sunday with Jeongsoo at the said time to play but none of the club members are ever there. Finally Jeongsoo texted one of the members and she said it began Sunday. Well, today is Sunday and I went. Once again none of the members were there. We just decided to play ourselves for awhile and watch some of the other people play, which was just as fun! A bit of a disappointment, but I figure that as long as I keep playing with people I'll improve enough to say I've completed my original goal! 加油！

National Holiday Week Break

This past week was National Holiday week so we had the whole week off in celebration! We took advantage of this time to travel around Beijing and see things we might normally not have the time for. I have a TON of pictures so I'm not going to go into great detail about all of them because it would take forever.

Sunday I went to District 798 with two of my classmates Song Ye Eun and Ma Hye Won. District 798 is an area that used to be full of operating factories but has no been converted to art galleries and shops. The place is massive and really unique! There's little cafes and art pieces all along the roads. It definitely reminded me of a hipster sort of hangout.

When we first left the girls told me that they wanted to find rings (they pronounced it "ling" and I loved it) at District 798 for all of us to wear as a sign of our friendship. They're so adorable and I can't get over it! Unfortunately we didn't find any we liked, but we're still on the look out!

I took a lot of pictures of graffiti because I was so impressed by it! We went in a few galleries, but none of us were really interested and enjoyed the street art and shops instead. 

There's a park nearby my school and I went there with two of my other classmates one night to just relax and enjoy the night scene. We saw some ladies dancing, men playing instruments I don't know the name of, and then we passed these people singing. Sorry for the lack of visibility, but the music is really all the matters!

One day when we were walking out of the school a guy in his mid twenties came up to us and tried speaking to us in broken English. He had a camera and a piece of paper with some writing on it. After a bit we figured out that he wants to propose to his girlfriend (who possibly went to CNU, unclear if that's what he was saying) and is taking pictures of people with the paper (which is asking her to marry him). Of course we agreed to help him! So... I guess I'm somehow involved with a marriage proposal. Who would have thought!

Wednesday we went to Xiang Shan. Xiang Shan is a mountain area that can be seen on the outside of Beijing. It's really pretty in autumn when the leaves change. I guess Mao had a sort of retreat area on the mountain and there were other historical sites there as well. Chad, Micah, and I decided to take the long way and hike the whole way to the top and back down. Everyone else took the chair lift up. Hiking up was exhausting and I was so sore the days after, but it was totally worth it! We had a great time seeing everything and laughing at our (mainly mine) lack of endurance.

That's our destination.... so close, yet so far.

This is where Mao sat. You weren't allowed to go in.

His living quarters.

Oh look, it's me! I had Chad take this picture because the last time I tried to get a picture in one of these circle doors I fell. Ironically I was in the beginning stages of falling backwards again as this was taken, but it turned out good so I was happy with it!

Such a trustworthy sign...

See that tower sticking up? That tower is really close to our school. We usually use it to determine how bad the smog is that day - some days it's clear, some days it doesn't even seem to exist.

People hang their wishes in the trees.

Finally at the top! It was very crowded.

Heading back down! Going down was almost harder because the stairs were so steep that you had to be extra careful to not fall.

Chinese Commons Lawn, maybe?

Friday we went to the Botanical Gardens. It reminded me of Frederick Meijer Gardens in a way. We walked around and enjoyed the exotic plants and not so exotic plants. There was an area that had a Jurassic Park theme, but we didn't go in because judging by the sounds coming from it, it was not worth paying to go in. We sat on some rocks at one point and became an attraction of our own. Parents would walk by and strategically place their kids so we were the background of their picture. It was a fun and relaxing afternoon.

Kids could go in these blow up tube things and run on the water.... jealous!

There was a rose garden...complete with lots of bees.

These girls were pretending the tree was a horse and I couldn't resist it was too adorable.

Look at those flat bowl/pancake like lily pads!

Chad met a friend! We ran into this kid two times at the garden and he had no fear what so ever to talk with us. He clearly knows English and wanted to know as much as he could about Chad. If we hadn't told him we needed to go I think he would have stayed there and talked for hours! I was impressed by English and friendly attitude.