Beijing: Day 6

So the last day in Beijing was pretty anti-climatic. Also, we don't have any pictures, so, sorry. 

We basically just spent the day in class. We tried to get those yummy sesame bread things again, but ended up with not so yummy ones and were crazy disappointed. We also got this weird different Chinese tortilla thing that they cut up and put in a bag. One of the program directors thought it was such a huge thing of food and was blown away that we finished it all. I was proud and slightly embarrassed about it. (Edit: it was roughly one kilo. That's 2.2 lbs for those of you stuck in standard. That's heavier than most loaves of bread. It was a lot, he had every right to be surprised.)

Our classes consisted of the program directors spending 2 hours teaching us all about how to be good people/tourists and travel around China. I am guessing this is from having to deal with lost teachers somewhere in China at some point in the past. It was great info on all the trains, planes, hostels, etc. so it was nice they did it. 

They also gave us a pep talk about how it will be pretty intense and you'll have moments where you want to just get on a train to the airport. They also said that you'll see a lot of different things while you're here and that you need to embrace the culture. That things aren't weird they're different. That's really good advice, but since Chad and I both are incredibly sassy we have been making fun of it ever since. Whenever we see anything, like 2 small children standing in a busy 6 lane road without an adult in sight (real world example), we always say "well that's different".

Anyway, the big milestone of the day was that Chad experienced the joy of using a squatter toilet for the first time (my first was at The Summer Palace). We were wandering around a grocery store with some friends when we both were like "Okay, time to go now!" and ran to the McDonald's a few doors down. The bathrooms were very nice and clean, but it was still an adventure. That is still Chad's only experience with a squatter toilet. I, however, cannot say that I have been as lucky. You could say that our digestive systems are still working on adjusting - on that note, if any of you have experience cooking in China, tips on western leaning meals would be greatly appreciated!

In case you haven't seen the joy that is a squatter toilet, I decided to allow you the opportunity to appreciate what I am working with (I did not take the picture, thanks Google). Also, you're welcome, there are A LOT of gross pictures on Google images, but I got you a nice clean one. 

So yeah, that's all you get. Fun huh?

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Beijing: Day 5

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.

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Beijing: Day 4

I really hate trying to come up with a clever post title. So, sorry they're so boring, but the stress of trying to be witty and funny is really getting to me. 

Anyway, Day 4 was quite the long day, but pretty awesomely memorable. The itinerary for the day was: The Great Wall (TGW), lunch, Jade Factory and the Ming Tombs. So as you could imagine you're about to get a serious photo storm.

Here you see our first view of TGW. At this point we are told we have the option of hiking to the top or taking the ski lift up. This particular part of TGW has these awesome alpine sides you can ride down so we knew we were doing that. They told us it was 60RMB ($10) to ride it down and an extra 20RMB to ride the lift up. So I think, "well it makes sense to ride it up because then it's only 40RMB both ways". I completely forgot who I was married to though, and he of course wanted to hike up it. So we did.... the picture below shows the wall and the elevation we started at... 

This building pretty much marks the start of the long insane hike to the top of TGW. It's a good thing I learned how to fake smile for pictures during my days as a Walt Disney World intern, because I was not at all excited for our journey. 

This is pretty much what the entire trip up looked like... a long staircase leading to the sun. The view down wasn't any more hopeful either as you can see by the picture after this one.

After every flight of stairs there was one of these little picnic table alcoves. My guess is because if you're making the hike you really should pack a meal to sustain you until you get up to TGW.

More depressing stairs

Getting slightly closer... I will admit it's a pretty breathtaking view

The wall is finally in sight!

 We finally made it up onto the wall, only to be greeted by about a million more stairs. Having now spent 2 weeks here, I've decided that the Chinese people stay so thin because the entire country is COVERED IN STAIRS.

Once again, because of who I married, we had to set off to get to the tallest point of the wall that we could reasonable get to in the time frame we were allotted. To give you an idea about the distance we went, look at the map below. We went from Tower 8 to somewhere between Tower 15 and 16. Then, to get to our awesome alpine slides we had to head back to Tower 6. We were up on the wall for 2.5 hours I believe.

 In each Tower we kept stopping inside because there was shade and the most beautiful of breezes. 

All day I felt like Hugh Grant in Love Actually. "I don't know what to do with my hands"

Didn't understand what this sign meant, at all

So now the picture of how high up we climbed. See that top tower up on the Hill wayyyy behind us? Yeah that's Tower 15.

I was trying to give perspective to the flights of stairs we were hiking up. If you look very closely on the left of the picture is a blue spot on TGW. That is Chad's shirt. 

This was a cute little village nestled in the middle of a bunch of mountains. TGW actually goes along the ridge of those far mountains too.. so they are surrounded by it. 

This is from the top of where we ended up. You can see TGW just stretching as far as can be, snaking up the mountain. 

And this, besides being super cool mountains, is probably the most artistic shot I've ever taken with a camera in my life. Like it's frame on the wall good. I was really (and still am) proud of myself. Seriously, look at the rest of these pictures, you should be proud of me too!

Remember that shot we took from the bottom of the wall looking up? Well this is pretty much the reverse of it.

Now we get to the alpine slides. Seriously whoever came up with this idea is a genius, we wanted to video it but we maybe forgot our camera wrist strap in the US, so we didn't want to risk it. This is the station you get on at. 

We wanted you to get a good idea of how the slide looked, so we took this kinda lame picture of the track.

This is the slide. It's really quite simple. If you lean forward, you slow down and if you lean back, you speed up.

This is Chad's artistic shot of the slide and the slides. I *think* that person on the slide might be this guy from our group who we were not fond of. He was never quiet. I don't recall a time when he wasn't talking. Except for when he was in the elevator with us (I think our dislike was somewhat apparent) and he didn't talk. He seemed really uncomfortable with it. And I feel like if I'm complaining about the amount someone talks that just gives you a great idea as to how talkative he was.

So the slide+ a skirt... not my best idea. 

Sadly, because we were trying to avoid the guy I mentioned above we let this father and his 3 grown up daughters go in front of us. That was a dumb idea because the last of the daughters to go down was a giant wimp and did not go fast at all... I spent the bulk of my slide experience making sure I didn't get too close to her Dad who was also stuck behind her. By the end of the ride (approx. 5 minutes) I think she had about 10 people stacked up behind her. I did get a few fast sections in though and it was pretty awesome. Chad was behind me and managed to snap a few pics of me going down. Because I am leggy (read: I didn't exactly fit in the length of the slide) and the wimpy Italian in front of me, it felt like I spent 5 minutes doing crazy crunches and squats. It was amazingly fun though and I think that if you make it to TGW you need to go to this section so you can do the slides. 

After lunch we packed it all up and went to a Jade Factory. To be honest it was cool, but I thought it would have been more of a factory and less of a giant jade store. I was very wrong. These next two pictures are people hard at work carving, washing (guy 1) and polishing (guy 2) jade to make the stuff sold in the store. We were told that this is the largest jade factory so that's pretty cool.

This is a TON of white Jade slabs just laying around

This guy is cool. He has the body of a horse, the head of a dragon, the foot of something and I think the horn of a unicorn. (Give me a break I had just hiked TGW, I was a little tired) I believe you can see that his mouth is open. What you can't see is that he has no bumhole. The symbolism here is that if you have him, you're blessed with money coming into your home, but not going out.

This is a Jade Family Ball. You can't really see but it has a couple more smaller balls inside that are just slightly smaller than the one above it. Each layer is suppose to represent a generation of a family. Showing that it can never be undone (you can't get the smaller balls out) and it keeps growing. 

Last stop of the tour was The Ming Tombs.These are pretty darn intense. To be honest when we had to walk up some stairs during the tour I almost cried.

This is where people would place their offerings to the emperor. 

Inside this huge building is a giant statue of the emperor, which you will see in a few more pictures.

Only the emperor was allowed to walk on this part in the middle, hence the mini-fence

The Emperor himself

The ceiling of this building was pretty awesome. It was super intricate, you know especially since it was built sometime between 1368-1644. AKA before anyone (besides the indigenous people) knew America existed.

 This topical map show the layout of the entire thing, where the wife and concubines and whatnot were buried.

 And this one shows the sweet setup the Emperor had. We are currently in that huge building that's kinda in the middle. 

This gate is symbolic of entering the land of the dead. If you walk through it, when you come back you need to say "I'm coming back" twice in Chinese. If you didn't you would leave your soul with the dead.

Pretty sure this is where Sirius Black died...

This is my reaction to having to walk up more stairs

This is basically the emperor's tombstone

Cool story about these bricks. They made each person who made them carve their name into the brick. That way if it crumbled or broke they knew who to go get to fix it (and presumably beat into a bloody mess)

This is a single brick

This as well

Let's just say the rest of these pictures are bricks and be done with it

After all this we went back to our hotel. We were pretty exhausted and in serious need of a shower. It was this night that we got our room changed to the big one with the big bed. It was quite fancy haha

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