The beginning of Day 5 started off a bit slow. After the action packed day that yesterday was, sitting in a classroom for 4 hours was... a little dry. But, since we were here to, ya know, teach English, sitting and learning about ESL teaching was probably a good idea. So that's what we did for the first half of the day. Sorry, I know it's not very exciting for you to hear about that.

As a dumb side note, if any of you single ladies out there wanna live in China long term, our instructor was pretty adorable and I'm 90% sure he's single.He showed us clips of him teaching little kids and all I could think is "how are all the single girls in this room not in love with him?!?!" (I told them I would break their legs if they tried anything. He is my back up plan for if, when, Michelle leaves me for bringing her here - Chad)

Anyway, back to cool stuff we did, since I'm assuming that's why you came to this blog... that or you're reading it because you're bored while you're trolling FB, either way, thanks for reading!

So the afternoon adventure was The Summer Palace. It's actually incredibly large, like Forbidden City big (those of you who love us and actually read all of our posts will understand that reference. If you still want to know, but not read everything or have to sift through our many, many posts, just read this post) We were deceived early on, because it doesn't look that big. But it is.

What I want to know was why did they just stay here in the summer? Also isn't it kinda lame to have your summer house in the same city as your non-summer house? If I were the Empress of The MIDDLE (freakin) KINGDOM I would probably put my summer house in like Hong Kong or something... well actually maybe I would put my summer house in Tibet and my winter house in Hong Kong. I do what I want, I'm an Empress. Anyway I digress. 

Below is the moat at the front. Those down there are shops. The Chinese sure know how to take impressive ancient buildings and turn them into gift shops. Seriously inside ancient shrines you can buy $3 watches and playing cards with the Emperor's of China on them.




When we walked up we kinda thought this was it, that this was THE Summer Palace. You know, because typically people's vacation homes aren't bigger than their main residences.

  
See what I mean about these people loving their stairs?

View from the top of the courtyard

The animals on the corners of the buildings is kind of a big deal. You should something it.

So the next Pagoda was pretty neat. I walked by and kinda saw it at a glance and I tried to get Chad to walk to it (he was being overzealous in trying to run ahead and explore everything without me), but it was behind a gate, which made me grumpy because I thought I would never get to see it in all its glory. Then I made him climb some rocks to go look at it and he just said "yeah... you should come up here." This is the view from that rock.

This picture does not do it justice, but it was amazing. The lake in the background is awesome as well - more about that later


 Oooohh! I forgot about this. I call this picture 'Why you should go to college'. Or I guess in China, 'Why you should work hard on your tests'. These guys were breaking rocks out of the cement on the ground to reuse them in making the rock designs in the sidewalk.

They looked up right as we snapped this picture. That was awkward.

The same pagoda, but from the backside

Directly behind the pagoda

 This is the 17 Arch Bridge. It's still in the Summer Palace. Are you grasping the hugeness of this "Summer House" now? It's pretty impressive.



After The Summer Palace we got very adventurous, breaking off from our group and braving the subways solo to go to the actual Pearl Market (not the faux pearl market we went to earlier). I liked it wayyyy better than the other market. It was a lot less crazy than the first one and it was wider and more spacious. Also, we kinda made friends with the salesgirls (alllll girls- I didn't see a single salesboy), they thought I was way too young to 1. be married and 2. be my age. I am sure they were doing it to try to get me to buy more stuff, but I'm easy like that. They also liked that I was a cougar. Impressed I married someone younger. So needless to say I liked them lots. (I don't agree with that, I think they genuinely wanted to be friends with her because the ones who spoke to her never actually offered her anything to buy. I was talking to one lady forever about my shoes while Michelle and a few other ladies from surrounding shops were just chatting it up. Even when we left they just said their goodbyes, they did not seem to have ulterior motives. Except the lady I was talking to, she just wanted my money. - Chad)


Chad managed to get a pair of Fnikes (fake Nikes - though they look pretty high quality) for about $14. He drove a seriously hard bargain. I think they anticipated him paying more, but he refused, knowing they would split soon due to his super fat feet. It was impressive to behold. We also really wonder how much they cost that they would offer them at $135 and yet be willing to part with them for under $14. 


After the Pearl Market we decided to keep up the brave streak and ventured to the Beijing Night Market by bus. On our way there we passed this pretty awesome Greek Orthodox church with a large group having a dance party. Didn't really expect that.


They call this area the "Times Square of Beijing". I was slightly dubious, but I have to say I was pretty impressed and I liked it a HELL heck of a lot better than Times Square. One because it wasn't as crowded and two it didn't feel like I was a cow being carried with the masses to slaughter, because it wasn't crowded.

Chimes Square. Get it? Chinese Times Square = Chimes Square

This is the night market. Basically, it's a super long row of food vendors hawking all sorts of crazy 'food' (they also have things like brains and scorpions, but more on that later). We got some noodles, an asian burrito and some dumplings. Oh, and sugar fruit! I didn't get a picture of it and that seriously surprises me because it was sooo good, it literally changed my life. They take fruit, skewer it and then dip it in liquid sugar. So we were eating strawberries and kiwis in a hard candy shell. I am actually shocked that someone hasn't started doing this in the US, I can see it going over incredibly well at a state fair (sweet business idea! Dibs.)

We maybe also had fried ice cream as well... it was good! Strawberry ice cream covered in something and slapped on a slice of bread (I don't know either, so don't ask why) and then thrown into a deep fryer. It basically tasted like french toast with strawberry ice cream, so you know it was good.



Some of the weirdness... Starfish legs, tarantulas, squiggly things

These were sugar, from what we could gather. How adorbs amirite?


The rest of the street was pretty awesome, full of big designer names and then crazy souvenir shops. These little animals made me laugh, they all looked like they were having seizures. That's why the picture is blurry.


See how much space there is to walk? HEAVEN

This was like fancy watch row. There were a ton of watch shops, I forget which ones though. Maybe when Chad edits this, he'll remember and tell you how cool it is. (Edit: it was pretty awesome. They had everything, Rolex, Tag Heuer, Breitling, it was a who's who of watch manufacturers - Chad). Then it was bus ride home to bed time. On our giant bed - actually just two twin beds pushed together, but wonderful all the same.