Aug 28

BUSY BUSY DAYS.

Monday was definitely the day why I was on this tour. Why, might you ask?

The Great Wall of China!

First we rode a bus for like an hour, then we got ticketed in. Katie took the stairs up the mountain and I took the ski lift. My first time on a ski lift. Hopefully my last. I didn’t trust that thing a bit. And I could only see trees and basic shrubbery, so it wasn’t even that exciting. Then I didn’t see Katie at the top, which made me inwardly panic because I had the return ticket for the super cool Toboggan ride which she was supposed to take.

And then I realized WHERE I was. And I couldn’t put the camera down or stop walking around. Until I got tired, anyways. There’s definitely a lot of ups and down on that SUPER AWESOME AND INCREDIBLE AND HISTORIC GREAT GREAT WALL OF CHINA. We got some great pictures once we found each other, Katie and I.

Plus we sang the song from Mulan, “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You,” on the Wall. And we did hand/headstands. Even me, yes. While everyone is sitting back down in their air conditioned and probable dull classrooms, we are walking all over history! Huzzah!

And I am so glad I had that umbrella on me or I might have just stopped. There was so much walking! Katie forced me on, however, and I’m glad I did. Every step brought a new view and it was so incredible and I can’t find enough adjectives to describe how much fun we had over there.

Finally, it was time to start heading out. We spent a while arguing who would do the ride because yes, I was very red and worn out and she had gained back all of her energy and more by that point. But I forced her on that ride, and I took the stairs! Which turned out quite peaceful and pleasant, going down there by myself. It wasn’t really hard, and partially in the shade. I took  my own pace down and never even got lost once I was out.

Down the road, we stopped at the Mr. Yang restaurant it was so incredibly delicious. We devoured that food, I’m still shocked there was even still any on the table! They had some carmelized onions which were new and quite yummy, along with another new one with chicken, carrots, and other cubed vegetables that we really enjoyed. One of Katie’s favorite dishes is still the spicy green beans, and luckily those are not hard to come by!

Luckily we had a bit of a break then, riding on the bus. About half of everyone dozed on, and I’m not surprised. The terra cotta soldiers, by the way, had been a bit of a lie because apparently none of them are in Beijing but for some reason we all thought some of them were…? Oh well. BUT we didn’t stop, we continued to Ming’s Tomb.

 

The drive, by the way, was fabulous. We passed by all of these adorable villages, pretty run down but still super cute. And I just LOVE LOVE LOVE their courtyard gardens you can partially see over their gates. I definitely want one of those some day.

By the way, I don’t know if I mentioned, and I think it was Saturday or something, when we had some Language training? Like for 4 hours? It was kind of fun, though Katie was done after like an hour. Because it was really long, and it’s really hard to focus after that. But I still was able to take notes, because just about all of it was super useful, seriously.

Back to Monday-

 

Ming’s Tomb was pretty cool. We learned a lot of great facts that day, like… oh, like his concubines! When the Emperor died, the concubines would eat a huge lunch and then go back to their rooms and hang themselves. I don’t know why they ate, but maybe they got to have all of their comfort foods? While the big guy got a tomb and a coffin and everything, the concubines were wrapped in cloth, and then simply buried in standing graves. It makes me wonder how well they actually stood up, and if their bodies just sort of… crumbled?

Anyways, we got there, it was cool. There’s this huge building with a slab with his name on it, and the way inside is super steep- facing his tomb on the other side of the building. Since it’s steep, it’s like you’re bowing to his tomb, if that makes sense? He was afraid people wouldn’t bow after his death so that’s why he did that. Also to get there, you can walk through the Gate of Ghosts, I believe it is called- you enter the ghost world there, basically. And on your way back, you have to say something in particular in Chinese to pass back through and not as a ghost. “Youla,” or something like that.

Beautiful arcitechture as usual, right? I think the building with his name in it, I think that was one taken from the Forbidden City or something, and all of that was made of wood- no nails or anything, just wood placed perfectly with one another. Isn’t that insane? The genius to be able to made things like that, it’s just incredible.

Oh and before we left, we used their 4 start bathroom. Excited right? It had a plaque and everything. Warning, though, it’s the basic of a decent public bathroom. It had chandeliers above, however, which was a nice touch. But it’s something I think something people are unaware of when coming to China. Most of the toilets were squatter ones, too- with just a few western toilets. Don’t worry- they usually have pictures up if there’s any difference!

 

After that adventure, we had a 1.5 hour bus ride to go back. Our tour guide for the day, Clement, reminded me of the guy from The Hangover and Community, but with a mostly different personality. Anyways, he decided we would have people come up and sing. I really can’t remember how that even got started, but there we have it.

We had girls singing renditions of “I Can Show You The World/Beijing,” our leader singing Kenny Loggin’s “Hundred Acre Woods,” [he sings to his 5-year-old daughter. It was adorable!], 3 guys slightly awkwardly but definitely humourously singing “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and no they weren’t drunk but they could have easily fooled someone. There was more Disney, some Josh Groban, and more. Thank goodness the finger never pointed my way. But this was definitely entertaining and kept us from falling asleep.

 

Back at our place, we grabbed a box of noodles for us- bigger than Ramen in America in their big bowl. It’s about 4 yuan and we could split it just fine. We also bought these funky cracker/cookie things with butter frosting. Weird, right? It sounds weird, it totally smelled weird- but it sort of worked. Anyways, we didn’t have a problem ever finishing them.

We showered and put on one of the coolest movies ever, Madagascar 2. Except that half way through, we were both dozing off, so we decided to stop for the night- only to realize it wasn’t even nine PM yet!

8:53 PM, really.

I know, our mothers would be so pleased. We changed and climbed into bed, And it was wonderful.

 

So that was yesterday. We sort of woke about 6 AM which was lame because our alarm wouldn’t go off for another hour. Definitely provided for some thinking time, though, and it felt amazing just to lie there and relax.

And then, finally we were up. I don’t really know what we were doing… but it took long enough so we really didn’t have time to go get any food.

Man, some of the food we’ve had though!

That morning right before training? We went back to the alley market just a few blocks down and got three different bread things. Sweet bread rolls which didn’t turn out so good- they looked uncooked, but are cooked, and are thick but pretty bland. We’d had them the night before, whenever long ago, with this sweet dipping sauce which was delicious. We didn’t have the sauce for that morning, unfortunately. Then we tried this green onion fried bread, which was extremely greasy [all the food kind of is, greasy and oily], but delicious. Our favorite was this flat round thing with sesame seeds. Kind of had a crescent roll texture- a bit hard and super flaky. But it was pretty sweet and very tasty!

 

Back to today… we ran out of time for food, and hurried to be in time for our first day of ESL training. There, we went through all sorts of ideas for our classes [I have basic themes, etc for nearly every single day teaching] , a basic plan for our first day, along with basic things to watch out for and such. The most important thing he reiterated was to be able to go with the flow- things will never go as expected, and change is good.  Don’t be too strict or anything, but there does need to be structure!

That took until noon, and then we headed out for group lunch! We’d been there before, but no one was complaining. It was very muggy today, though. Humid with lots of clouds and such. But it wasn’t too bad, to be honest, and it was nice not to have the sun burning into my shoulders or anything!

More foods to try at lunch, yay! We finally tried dumplings. The meat one was a lot like a potsticker [okay, there was about no difference, except they are SO DIFFICULT to grab with chopsticks], but there was one without meat… Not so great. May have had fish, we don’t know. Not so good, though!

And yes, using soy sauce makes you look like a tourist. No one really uses it.

And no one eats rice with the meal. They use it as a filler at the very end, and that’s it. But hey, we’re Americans so we aren’t following that rule- yet.

Overall, the food was great as always. A few new dishes were pretty tasty, except for one with thick sprouts and see-thru noodles, not so great. And they brought out this dish that looks like eggplant. It was too hot and I was too full, and I couldn’t rip it- but I did dig my teeth in for a bit of it, and it seemed pretty good.

Last part of our meal, we found the black something-or-other pepper shells they use for flavoring, and those are what can numb the inside of your mouth. So Katie put TEN in at once to find out what would happen. What happened? Her mouth totally numbed, and she couldn’t stop laughing. Luckily if she bit her tongue it wasn’t about to hurt!

 

Finally we were all beyond stuffed, we took to the subway over to the Summer Palace! You have to pay to get in which is silly, but it was very beautiful! We never made it across down to the water part because you have to pay for the boat, and after doing the Great Wall the day before, I didn’t think we’d be able to find our way up.

Luckily, Katie didn’t mind. We found some rocks to sit on, and we ended up chilling out for about an hour, just talking and enjoying the scenery and such. When we finally climbed down to start out, we took off a side path through the trees and the bits of nature.

Yeah, we sort of got lost in there.

There were so many paths, too many choices. But luckily we found the right one- right over to these old, crumbling set of stairs. It was beautiful, like out of a dream or tour guide or something, I don’t know. No one was around, though, we don’t think people really even used the paths much anymore. We paused for a few pictures, just loving that.

We left there on our own eventually, and we got back on the subway.

Having to wait 12 stops, we luckily got seats, and ended up sitting next to this 30-year-old Alsonso from Spain, who had quit his job and spent the last 7 months traveling the world. Crazy, right? But he was very chill and relaxed, and had quite the beard growing in. It was fun talking with him, though, and it’s always so much fun to meet travelers who have been to so many awesome places!

 

Our way back, we stopped at the market to buy some fruit- fruit!- and head back. We got caught up in a bit of traffic, following right after a few people crossing… and we weren’t even supposed to be walking there yet. Certain people still had to avoid bikes and scooters, as well as cars going around the bend up ahead. I can’t even begin trying to explain how scary and ridiculous the traffic is, seriously. But it’s pretty intense, and we were both gripping our own items pretty freaking tight until we made it safely across.

After getting our fruit, we grabbed dinner [another ramen bowl! But this vegetable one definitely made my eyes water! A lot… it was very spicy. But promising and tasty besides that fact. With dinner in hand, and ice cream in another, we returned to our place to try to repack a little, ignore the sewer smell of our bathroom, finish last night’s movie, and start catching up on our journals and blogs. Ta-da!