Backtracking last few days...

Okay, so it's Monday morning back home, many of you are bored at work, so I've put it off long enough, here are some stories from the past few days.

Still on a high from the Silk Market a bunch of us went out Thursday night. We hit up the bars in Sanlitun, a haven for expats in Beijing. My friend Mike bartered for beers before we went into any bars (10 RMB was all we'd pay...about 1.50) so we never paid more than 10 for beers. We found a bar called Boys and Girls playing some great dance music...which, if you're a girl or know a girl, once a girl starts drinking she USUALLY wants to dance. After dancing to a couple songs, the music gets all weird...oh, did I forget to mention that there were two POLES on the stage?! So some girl comes out and does her thing. She was alright, not that I'm a pole-dancing expert or anything....um. Anyways, we think it will be time to dance again and a GUY comes out. I will not even try to describe what he was wearing but we'll just saw some kind of black shiny vinyl thing. But it did not matter what he was wearing because this guy was GOOD! Again, I'm no expert, but when the straight guys in our group are watching the stage, mesmerized, it was pretty crazy. We were all impressed...flabbergasted...etc.

The next day a group of us attempted the Forbidden City. Note to self: after being herded around like cattle for 3 days on our propaganda tour, do not, I repeat, do NOT travel in large groups! i.e., groups larger than 5. We did not leave the CUC campus til around 1, and we had been trying to get people together since 11:30. Plus, the Forbidden City is a marathon, not a sprint. We did not even navigate all of it. The Forbidden City was amazingly huge (including Chairman Mao's portrait greeting us upon our entrance--pic above), and wonderful, but you can only walk through so many "Gates of Heavenly Splendor" before they all start to look the same in the pictures. After walking through, we had a delicious duck dinner. We then wandered over to the Wangfujing night market, where tons of vendors set up carts and sell dumplings, chicken, beef, fruit on a stick, coconut with a straw, even more exotic/interesting offerings like scorpion, bugs, seahorse and snake. I stuck with the dumplings...although some of my friends tried the scorpion, bugs, and snake. We ended the night at the official headquarters store of the Olympics. It was overwhelming. Do you want an Olympic duvet cover? a tie? kimono? his and hers towels? Plus the typical gifts: t-shirts, hats, etc.

For the subway ride back to campus I treated myself to a vanilla soft-serve ice cream cone...ice cream here is definitely more ice than cream.

Saturday morning, still recovering from the big-group mentality, my friend Mike (who is engaged to a girl from Newmarket, NH!! See, we're all connected.) and I headed to the Art District, 798 (pic above). It was a lot of fun...the galleries and museums were fabulous. I bought a couple prints, and we had a delicious lunch. I splurged and ordered a smoothie, it was worth the 30 RMB. We aren't supposed to eat any fresh fruit with a skin (strawberries, apples, etc.) But bananas, kiwis, and oranges are okay. So the fresh smoothie was like heaven.

After the art district, Helen and I ventured back to Sanlitun, where she had lost her camera the night before. After not finding her camera, we wandered into a restaurant called Cappucinno--I had been craving pizza, so Cappucinno seemed like a safe bet. Well, it ended up being all Middle East inspired. We sat in a huge booth, we each had practically a couch to ourselves...and it was happy hour! Over a plate of delicious homemade hummus and some Tsingtao beer, we lounged comfortably.

Sunday morning Suzy (my roommate) woke me up and invited me to her ONS manger, Bob's tea house. He and his wife were going to make us dumplings for lunch, too. It sounded like fun. So we headed out to Bob's tea house. It was a bit of a hike, similar to riding the Red Line from one end to the other. But it was well worth the trip! We had a traditional Chinese tea ceremony, and even had a turn at the end to pour for our host, too (pic above). We practiced Chinese calligraphy, too. The dumplings were delicious, too! I bought a travel-size tea set so when I come home I can make tea for all of you!

Sunday night's dinner was delightfully delicious. We headed to the hutong (local Chinese neighborhood) for dinner at a Uighir (pronounced Weeger) restaurant. Uighir food is from the region of China that borders Pakhistan and Afghanistan. We ate delicious flat bread, lamb kebabs, rice, noodles, even thinly sliced potatoes that were like potato chips, but better.

Monday morning we headed to the Silk Market for another day of haggling and bargain shopping...I could totally get used to this. Good news is my souvenir shopping is pretty much done!

Now it's Monday night and I am ready for bed. Tomorrow we head to the Bird's Nest! I am giddy with anticipation.