Desperately Seeking DHL

I woke up Friday morning with a mission: find a DHL to ship some items home that I a)did not need (Yes Kathy, you were right, I DID overpack!) and b)a couple of gifts that I wanted to get home before I did.

My friend Mike and I set out for the China World Trade Center--2 mammoth business towers with an inter-connected mall in the lower floors. His Lonely Planet assured us we would find a DHL there. (DHL was recommended because the company has been doing business in China for the longest time and therefore the most reliable). Well, we searched the mall- up and down, back and forth, between the Towers 3 times. We did find an indoor skating rink, 2 Starbucks, and, my personal favorite--much to Mike's shock and chagrin--a HUGE Sanrio store. (see pic below...also, notice my Spain jersey? I got it at the Silk Market for 60 RMB, less than 6 bucks...this picture made me realize why. The sleeves are two different lengths! Oh well).

After almost 2 hours we found the DHL--which was actually a hotel's Business Center. AND the Business Center was being renovated so it was in a different location. While filling out the paperwork, I found out that I could NOT ship home any official Olympic merchandise without my receipt. So, sorry fam, you are not getting Olympic stuff to wear DURING the Olympics.

Moral of the story: never ship stuff home from China, it's just not worth it. Lesson learned. But don't tell Mike, I'm psyched we found the Hello Kitty store!

Links to Facebook photo albums...

Even if you aren't on the 'social networking' site, you can check out my Facebook photo albums:

Forbidden City, First Day at Bird's Nest, Tea Ceremony, Taco Tuesday
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024413&l=783d9&id=43500156

3-Day Tour
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024204&l=ee194&id=43500156

Beijing...the First 48:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024022&l=23346&id=43500156

Ohmmmm.....Relaxing Day in the Lama Temple

Meditating in the Lama Temple




So the morning began a bit stressfully--my friend Jennie and I headed over to the Bird's Nest to put some last-minute contraband snack items in our lockers before the stadium goes on lockdown tomorrow. Well, we got to the subway stop just fine, but we could not GET to the stadium! It was like a mirage in the desert, we could see it,
but it was unattainable--we had to cross 16 lanes of traffic and we couldn't find any place to cross over. It was a bit frustrating...AND it was the hottest weather we've seen since we've been here! In fact, the past 3 days have been unbearably hot.

Once we got in to the Nest, after circling for over an hour, we filled our lockers, filled up our empty water bottles and began our next adventure: heading to the Lama Temple.

By the time we arrived, we were pretty hungry. So before we went in we stopped for some lunch at a Tibetan restaurant that promised an English menu. We walked right in...I remember thinking "I don't care WHAT they serve, I'm just thrilled about the air conditioning in here!" Well, it turns out I DID care what they served--YAK, and lots of it! Yak milk, yak tongue, yakkity yak yak. As Jennie and I thumbed through the menu I started to panic...what would we do? Could we politely leave? What is the mandarin word for vegetarian?! And then, at the last pages of the mammoth menu, we found: Tibetan stir-fry veggies, Tibetan style potatoes and some spicy fried chicken. Everything was delicious, and better yet, the yak milk was complementary! (Pics below: yak milk and Tibetan potatoes...wanted to take a picture of the chicken, but we ate it too fast!)
























After our delicious meal, we headed to the temple for some enlightenment. We walked in through a tree-lined entrance and it was the quietest, most peaceful place I've been since we got here. I kept thinking of the Great Wall and how we pushed and prodded our way through, and the temple was so relaxing and quite. We wandered through the different smaller temples, making our way to final temple, the Guinness Book of World Records' 2nd-largest Buddha statue in the world. It was HUGE...and it was made out of ONE trunk of sandalwood--unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures. It definitely was a sight to behold.

Video finally uploaded!

Click the link below to see the video footage of the 'minor' traffic altercation the bus in front of us got in, on our descent from the Great Wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAO6oDpNDmQ

Look, Mom, I'm famous! (In China)

So, our trip to Bob's tea house was covered by some local media outlets...check out the pics (and story--in Mandarin, of course!) below.

If I had any idea photos would be taken I probably wouldn't have worn my Ellsbury shirt...pshaw, who are we kidding?! I would have worn it.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/photo/2008-07/20/content_8610379_3.htm

http://news.xinhuanet.com/olympics/2008-07/20/content_8705914.htm

FIRST DAY AT THE BIRD'S NEST

Yes, all caps were needed.

On Tuesday morning we met one of our fellow ONS-ers, a guy whose American name is Walter at the main gate of the campus. (Because of a slight communication snafu, we thought his name was Water...and we were all excited to have a guy named Water after the tour guide named Rock! So we were kinda disappointed when he spelled his name as we put his # in our cell phones.)

Anyways, Walter gave us our media credentials (pic above), which give us free subway and bus rides through the Games AND access to the Bird's Nest/National Stadium! We got on the subway, and it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the Bird's Nest...two changes of subway lines and one bus connection.

Once we got inside, we headed to the Press Conference room where we had an informal meeting with one of the principal designers of the stadium and he showed us all the plans and layouts. We had a chance to ask him questions at the end and I asked what he hoped it would be used for after the Games, he said probably a supermarket, mall, and stadium too. I know there has been some disagreement among the principal architect (a Swiss guy I think?) and the Chinese government over how the stadium will be used after the game...the architect really wants it to be open to the public.

After our meeting, some of the ONS staff organized a little scavenger hunt for us around the stadium. It was crazy! Nothing like the Olympic spirit of competition to get us all fired up for a 'special prize'. Naturally, my group won (hahaha) in record time! We were sprinting all around the Bird's Nest finding locations, and I snapped a couple pictures--even though picture taking is forbidden.

After our impromptu medal ceremony, we headed to lunch. If I am eating this lunch every day I may actually lose some weight here! It was pretty bad, even the Chinese volunteers agreed.

Then we had a quick tour of the media venues and a group went off to the supermarket to stock up on food for our lockers--the stadium goes into lockdown on Friday and no outside food is allowed.

Four of us stayed back, because we figured we'd never get the opportunity to just hang around the Bird's Nest ever again. So we wandered up in to the stands and took a seat. We tried to conspicuously take some pics and then we noticed all these people congregating around the field. They were doing all these preparations for the opening ceremony! AND they started a dress rehearsal! It was SO awesome. It is going to blow your mind.

After everyone returned from the grocery store, we headed out with Emily, our ONS manager and a bunch of other people who work for Infostrada, the company BOCOG hired to be ONS. We went to this excellent Mexican place for Taco Tuesdays! We had a blast and it was great to get to know the Infostrada guys and girls better and also see a fun side of Emily, too!

Now I am off to Bruce's room down the hall because he's got the Sox game on!

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.