Happy Day at My Happy Place

I finally went to see the pandas! They were absolutely amazing!

I saw a couple pandas back in the day when I came to china with school, but both times they were really lame. So my standards were pretty low going into the zoo today. When I finally made it into Panda houses I was so surprised to see them laying around on rocks really close to the people at the windows. They were so comfortable and loved all the attention, so cute!

The Beijing Aquarium is inside the Beijing Zoo. It's an additional fee, but totally worth it. It's no secret that I absolutely LOVE the aquarium. I walked in and went straight for the "Walk Through the Rainforest" section. The first thing I saw was a bunch of those big Chinese fish swimming around in a pond, I didn't know they were in the rainforest. haha But I was still super excited and took loads of pictures :-)

Two in one day!

I just moved to another cafe.  I'm now at this place called The Bookworm.  It was opened by this British ex-pat who wanted a bookstore and library with English books.  The Chinese libraries have very tight restrictions on what books the public are and are not allowed to read, so she wanted to offer an alternative.  If you have a permanent address in Beijing and you pay 200 yuan, you can borrow 2 books at a time as long as you promise to bring them back.  (P.S.  The owner is sitting next to me right now :-)  They have a great selection of all sorts of books philosophy, art, travel, china, classics, childrens, history, etc.  Plus they have a full menu of extravagant meals and alcoholic beverages!

I just noticed an award framed on the wall from some ex-pat english magazine...

"Best Place to Find a Date"

sorry what?!? well then, my jury's still out on that one

Life Here

First off, I put up a few more pictures. I've been taking it pretty easy lately.

Secondly, there are few things I'd like to address today...construction workers, food, and babies.

Construction Workers: When passing a construction site, you will notice several workers all clad in grungey clothes and no safety gear. But that is not really a big deal because when you see this group of workers, they are all gathered around just standing there watching one guy do all the work. I guess thats communism for you.

Food: Many have asked and I've been a little hesitant on responding because I don't want to repeat what happened at Space Camp. I will start by sharing a typical dining experience. Most restaurants are non-smoking now because of the Olympics, so you don't have to worry about that much. The menu usually has chinese and english (sometimes the english is a little off, but you can get the idea) and there are always lots of pictures. The pictures definitely help, but no matter how good the picture looks of say, pig knuckle in brown sauce, I will not order it. You call loudly for the waiter, "Fu Yuan," and accompany it with an obnoxious waiving hand in the air, otherwise they'll ignore you (and this goes for pretty much every restaurant.) When you're done eating you can usually sit as long as you want and they don't care, but as soon as you ask for the bill, they stand there until you pay and then expect you to get up and leave immediately.

When I'm not in the mood for the whole restaurant scene, there are these little hole-in-the-wall places that serve all sorts of chinese-y things. The front of these places have a little window that you order at and they make your food right there, put it into a little clear plastic bag, and give it to you. It's always hot and fresh, very yummy. In these types of places the most popular

thing is fried egg sandwiches. There is a guy right outside my apartment building that works every day from probably 7am to 10pm maybe longer. The shop is no bigger that a small walk-in closet. He has a cute little apron with cartoon pictures on it. He stands at his window with a large cooking stone like the ones you make crepes on. When you order he will whip you up one of these awesome crepe sandwich things: First he pours a crepe-like mix down and spreads it out, then he cracks an egg on top of that, breaks the yolk and spreads that around on top of the crepe. Next he flips it over so the egg is on the outside of the sandwich. He then smears some sauces on it, spicy and sweet, throws some cilantro on that (cilantro is huge here, everything has cilantro in it!) and then places a crispy wonton wrapper on top of that. He strategically breaks the wonton sheet so that he can fold the crepe into a nice little square. He plops it into a plastic bag (like a mini grocery store bag) you pay, and he hands you a steaming hot meal in a bag. I'm really into this whole thing, so next time I'll see if I can take pictures of him doing it :-)

This is just one of the many little windows you can stop at. There are also bread places that make fresh flatbread very similar to naan. One of the best things I've had here so far, plus I get to watch the woman make it.

I should stop now, because I went on for a long time about food, but real quick I'll tell you about the babies.

Chinese babies are like all babies either really cute or really ugly. Unfortunately for the cute chinese babies, there is this heinous haircut that all parents are giving their children.

This is just my subjective opinion, but it looks something like a little poop turd on their forehead...no joke. This is the best example I could find, so image Chinese baby not western baby and black hair not brown. In addition to these strange little haircuts, babies here don't wear pants or diapers. And if they do wear pants, the crotch it missing. That way when they gotta go, they can just go. They walk around with their little wee-wees and bottoms hanging out for all to see. Great for them. But I was in an old temple/museum the other day and a baby started peeing on the floor, no big deal, the parents carried it outside eventually, but left a nice little water trail on their way out. Luckily they don't seem to poop too much...

These are just some of the little cultural observations I've made over the past couple of weeks. Stay tuned...next I'll tell ya all about the taxi cabs here!

7/28/2008: Lazy Sundays

It's truly amazing how tired I was after the Great Wall hike.

Yesterday was sunday and a very good one at that because my roommates had the day off and I could barely walk.  I mean sounds great, right?  

Sam, one of my roommates, Diane, another NBC runner, and I went to this amazing french place for brunch.  Diane's lemon ricotta pancakes were amazing and I'm definitely trying the Chocolate Brioche French Toast.  Wowza!  

The restaurant doubles as a night club/bar at night (the name changes too, china is weird like that) so we got to sit at this really cool booth that you take your shoes off and climb in.  We decided this booth was more comfortable than our mattresses here.  

Then the three of us headed up to the 798 Art District (they both had never been before), I showed them some of the more popular things, but we ended up sitting at cafes most of the time because we were all so tired.  That's when we decided it was time to hit up one of the millions of spas they have here.  We ended up at Bodhi where we each got an hour and a half massage for $35 USD and it was good too!  Also if you go there during the week before 6pm, you can get an hour massage for $14...I mean really now, what is stopping me from going back there everyday before I start work?  

A Wonderful Wall

I did it! A 6 mile hike on some of the toughest terrain of the Great Wall and I came back pretty much unscathed (except for some really sore muscles and complete fear of having to climb stairs ever again). I found this trip through a random hostel that I passed the other day. I reported to the bus at 6:20am this morning. They gave me a strange egg sandwich breakfast that had 3 pieces of bread, ham, an egg, and what I believe was breaded eggplant. Anyway, we set off on a 3 hour bus ride to the mountains. We passed all the main tourist sections of the wall and eventually got to this area called JinShanLing. There were about 35 people with my group from all over the world: Israel, Germany, Brazil, France, Mexico, US, Thailand. It's pretty amazing to hear someone speak Polish to their friends and then turn to the driver and speak fluent Chinese to him, but then speak English to everyone else. I couldn't help but be incredibly jealous of their sweet skills. When we were at the base of the mountains about to set lose on the trail, I befriended a guy from Brazil, Carlos. He hasn't actually lived in Brazil for two years because he went to Australia to make money and learn English, now he's checking out Asia and Beijing is his first stop, after a few more stops around Asia he wants to go to London in the Fall for a bit. I can't help but mention that he had this huge tattoo of the world map on his leg and he wore flip-flops on this hike. We made a deal at the beginning that we would be happy to take pictures of each other on the wall because we both have families complaining that we aren't in any pictures :-)

Moving on, the wall was absolutely amazing. This was probably the most tiring thing I have ever done to experience history and culture. The slopes were very steep most of the time going up and down. There were lots of Chinese people haggling on the wall trying to get you to buy their ice cold water or their "I Climbed the Great Wall" t-shirts. That would get a little annoying after a while, but it couldn't ruin the amazing picturesque world I was walking through. Unfortunately the pictures really don't do it justice, so I didn't take any.

Just kidding. They're right here.

On a completely unrelated note. If your not sick of looking at pictures or you're bored at work, take a look at these great architectural finds.

My legs are numb from all the stairs. I'm off to bed. Goodnight.

My Humble Abode

Here is my nice little apartment building.  15 floors of glory (I'm on the 12th).  Apparently the Beijing Olympic Committee gave our building money to freshen-up the outside.  So they painted it pink and gave us a little front lawn out front.  Maybe now I can go tan outside on the lawn!  Then again, maybe not.

Last Weekend's Pictures

Oh gosh, I forgot to share these, sorry!

My roommates had the day off, so we went shopping! These are all from Wangfujing, a very westernized area and home of the Olympic Superstore.

Then I also came across these sweet Olympic posters on display at the mall thanks to BMW.

798 Art Space

Bottom Line: Sweetest place in Beijing.

The 798 Art District has taken over an area of decommissioned factories that manufactured military supplies during the World War II era. The area is filled with lots of narrow alleyways and large, lofty buildings. Just recently it started to take on a new complexion of this hipster art district. Artists both new and old have moved in and refurbished these old buildings to house their collections. Pretty much all of the galleries are free except for a giant new contemporary art museum commissioned by a European couple. The streets are lined with little cafes and art book stores. Most of the cafes look deserted, but really all the people are inside enjoying the air conditioning because it is so ridiculously hot out. There weren't mobs of people, but it definitely drew a steady international crowd.

Check out the pictures of 798. And the graffiti art I found.

Needless to say, I loved every minute of it! It's like they built the place with people like me in mind.

I talked a bit with a girl who worked in one of the little art shops that sells beautiful ceramics. She was busy packaging and sending out orders to people all over the world. She spoke a little english - because here everyone starts learning english in middle school, but they don't have a lot of opportunities to speak it, so they don't. She had a list of western names written down and showed it to me and asked me the meaning behind the names. This of course completely stumped me. She had the name "Angela" written down and next to it, "Angel" sure this one made sense to me. But I had no idea if it was true. She wanted to know if the name Sarah meant princess. Since I didn't have my Name Dictionary on me, I couldn't really give her a good answer.

After a little while I decided to go on a poster hunt. Every gallery that I went into, I'd ask for a poster. Some would give them to me for free others wanted anywhere from 15-100 yuan for them. Let's just say I wouldn't pay over 20 yuan, so my poster collection is a little challenged. But I went klepto on all the free stuff and can't wait to decorate my room at school :-)

I finally found my place in Beijing, this is totally it. So if you need to find me, I'll be in the 798.

7/21/2008: The Summer Palaces

This past Sunday Beijing opened up 2 new subway lines and tested the Olympic line.  I've been mainly using the subway to get around because it is the most convenient and up until recently it was free because of my Olympic Visa, but of course yesterday they just decided they didn't want to let me ride free anymore...grr.  

Anyway, yesterday I decided I would utilize the new subway line to go Northwest of the city and check out the Summer Palace (Yi He Yuan) and the Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan).

This is the preserved Summer Palace.  It is where the Qing Emperor's wife lived because she preferred it over the Imperial  Palace at the Forbidden City and I definitely don't blame her.  It is a huge park now and you have to pay to get in.  You can rent boats on the lake and there are lots of little mini museums in all the buildings.  When I was walking around the lake, I met this Chinese man.  He just randomly started talking to me, people do that sometimes here I think it's because they want to practice their English.  This guy's english wasn't too hot, so we ended up speaking mostly in Chinese.  Apparently he is a brain doctor, he lives in Beijing, and he has an 8 year old son.  When asked why he wasn't at work (seeing as it is Monday and all) he just said he was taking a break.  I was a bit skeptical about his answers and still don't know if all this is true.  Well, we ended up spending about 3 hours wandering around the Summer Palace and he took on the role of my tour guide even though he said he had never been before.  He was a very nice fellow, but I didn't know if I should just enjoy his kindness or be completely creeped out.  After we climbed over this huge mountain, he bought me a water and then he was going to take me on the bus to show me where the Old Summer Palace is.  That's when I decided to be too creeped out and basically ditched him.  I'm sorry if this makes me a terrible person and gives Americans a bad image.  But enough was enough and like a good American I went and sought refuge at a nearby McDonalds.

After a short recovery, I grabbed a taxi over to the Old Summer Palace.

When I first arrived I was a little freaked out that I would run into this dude and I really don't think I could have handled that!  Luckily this park was huge and I kept getting lost, so I figured I was in the clear.  For the first hour or so I had no idea where I was going, I knew there were supposed to be really cool ruins from the old palace, but I had no idea where they were and the map didn't help much.  I was about ready to head home,  but then I stumbled upon the old European ruins.  This palace was designed by Europeans and built by local Chinese craftsmen and they ended up building gorgeous grounds like this mini labyrinth (it's much harder than it looks)

It is such a unique kind of architecture!  It didn't look like every other old building here, so it was really refreshing.

That's all for now!

PICTURES!

I've been busy getting lost, finding cool places, and taking lots of pictures!

Here is the link to check out photos from around Beijing.

Then I also ventured to the Olypmic Village. Everything is under construction and there aren't really any people, so it will be really interesting to see what it looks like when it's open to the public. They have been practicing for the Opening Ceremony everyday for the past week or so. Bus loads of people come in for the day that all look the same and are dressed the same. I guess the story is that every person in the ceremony was hand-picked because for each part of the show, they had to have a certain look. That way when you see hundreds of them doing something you aren't overwhelmed by trying to look at all the faces and you can enjoy what they're actually doing instead.

I had to take the pictures down because I could get fired from my job (that I haven't even started yet) if they find them.

7/18/2008: Rainy Morning

The sun rises very early here, probably around 4:45am.  The curtains in our apartment are just for show, they don't actually do anything.  We all get up pretty early because of this, but I'm very thankful that I brought along one of those sleeping masks, it helps me sleep SO much.  Plus, when I wear it I feel very Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffany's).  As a rainy day activity I took pics of my apartment and thought I'd share them.

Here is our kitchen/dining area plus the bed/couch

And this is one of the bedrooms that the 3 girls share.  I have the purple bed on the floor (I think I got the best deal...the big bed is like a wooden box with sheets and the blue bed sinks down to the floor when you sit on it, but mine is stiff but not bad)

Here is a view from our window...we are right on a big street and as you can see today's weather=crappy

7/17/2008: I'm Here!

I've made it to the mainland and I'm all settled at my apartment.  My jarbled chinese is getting me around and people are being very patient and friendly which makes everything a lot easier.

Today it was really sunny (you could actually see the sun which is kinda a big deal here) So I decided to walk out the front door of the apartment building, turn left, and walk straight with no real destination.  Eventually I ended up at 

Hou Hai - a beautiful lake surrounded by a walking path with lots of restaurants and bars.  All of which were way too intimidating to go into.  When I finally worked up an appetite, I started scouting out my very first Beijing restaurant experience, this was no easy task.  I ended up walking into this cute little place, I took one look at the menu and found that the place had a theme...Pride and Prejudice.  I took this as the perfect sign, seeing as this is one of my favorite stories, and had a very tasty lunch.  When I headed back to my apartment, I jumped on the subway.  Turns out the with my Olympic visa, I get to ride the subway for free...not too shabby.  

Needless to say I'm exhausted and can't wait to go to sleep!  This weekend I've got some plans to meet up with a couple other NBC Nightly News runners that are also just hanging out until we have to start working.  And on Sunday my roommates get the day off so we're going to the zoo to see PANDAS!! 

*Please Note

Due to unknown circumstances (probably something to do with the Chinese government blocking it) I cannot get on my other website...so this will have to suffice