Beijing

Right now I'm on a one-week break thanks to today's National Holiday. So Angali, Anita, and I decided to go to Beijing for the week and check out the sights. We also joined up with Edgar from the Foreign Nationals School downtown. So far the trip has been amazing. Beijing is still basking in the glow from the recent Olympic Games. Flowers are in bloom everywhere, banners for the Olympics still fly, and it seems like all of China wants to visit the capital for the National Holiday. The streets are packed with foreigners and Chinese alike, thronging to take in the sights.

We left Dalian on Saturday night after a full day of teaching. The six-day work-week wasn't quite so taxing because we had sports day on Friday and didn't have any regular classes. Still, it was weird to have one more day of school before the break. It seemed like every teacher gave a quiz or test on Saturday, poor kids, and my class was no exception. That means I have a lot of marking to look forward to when I get back home! I actually thoroughly enjoyed sports day. I had a one-hour block to supervise various events and cheer on my homeroom, but other than that, the day was free. It was one of the most beautiful and clear days that we have had in a while, so I couldn't resist the urge to take my bike down along the beach and snap pictures of the coastline. I can't wait to share them with you, but the computers at the hostel here are having trouble reading my USB stick. Anyways, it was a wonderfully relaxing day. That evening, we headed into Kaifaqu for an all-you-can-eat buffet at the East Hotel. It was a little pricey by China standards, but the chocolate fondue made it all worth the while :)

So, as I was saying, we took the qing gui out to the airport to catch our evening flight Saturday after school. We were going to grab dinner along the way, but we didn't have enough time, so we ate at the airport. We got to take a shuttle-bus out to our airplane and walked right on the plane. The trip was about as short as the flight from Terrace to Vancouver, so we barely got in the air when we started to descend again. We were a little too excited about our escapades, I think, because one of the guys in front of us told the steward to tell us to be quiet. It's true that when Anita, Angali, and I get together, we get eachother going :)

We took a bus from the airport and arrived at our hostel in a hutong district of Beijing just after midnight. I'm so impressed with our hostel (Chinese Box Hostel) - it's incredibly clean and even has sit-down toilets that flush (truly a luxury in China). Anita did a great job finding an affordable, lovely place to stay. We're staying in a six-bed dorm with a guy from Switzerland, and a Chinese guy. We got up early on Sunday morning and went straight to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We had breakfast at a noodle restaurant by Tiananmen. I still have a hard time getting used to eating spicy noodles with meat and veggies for breakfast, but I'm learning to adapt. I don't crave Western food very often, but I do when it comes to breakfast. It's a good thing I brought a whole case of my favourite oatmeal with me to China :)

After breakfast, we were excited to explore the Forbidden City. It took us a long time to get inside the city since we kept getting distracted by the many things to see along the way. We got tickets for a small artifact exhibit, and on our way in, we met an art student who showed us an exhibition of his and his classmates' work. I picked up some paintings to put up in my place (I still have to show you what my new place looks like). Then we went next door and dressed up in traditional Chinese dress and had our pictures taken in front of screens of the Great Wall and the emporer's throne. Sure, it was a bit of a tourist trap, but it's also a nice keepsake. While we were waiting for them to develop, we checked out some of the small museum exhibitions and then finally went into the city. I could have easily spent a whole day there, exploring the alleys and buildings. It really is a city all to itself. I especially liked walking through the gardens and seeing all the exotic plantlife. It was there that we met Tyler, who is studying Chinese in a city close to Dalian. In her typical style, Anita picked up his cell number so that we could get together throughout the week. On our way out of the city, we bumped into a lady who was offering tickets to an acrobatics show. We haggled them down from 180 yuan to 100 yuan, but it was still too much for Angali, so Anita and I went on our own. It was an amazing experience to see girls spinning plates on large sticks, guys jumping through hoops, and eight people riding one bicycle. I was surprised that the audience didn't applaud more often. My favourite part was a love story between a man and woman, floating through the air on stretchy ropes. It was truly beautiful. After the show, we got a text from Tyler inviting us to meet him and some others in the bar district of Sanlitun. Angali and Edgar met us later that evening and we danced the night away. It was a fun-filled day!

More to come...