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Published: February 18th 2008
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From Above
A view from the plane. Today, let's discuss my visit to Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City. I put up a few pictures that I had taken. You really can not grasp how large these places are until you are there. I mean, yes, I knew they would be big, but the Forbidden City seems neverending when you are walking through it. It's a little overwhelming. I do not have too much to say about the square and city themselves, mainly because the pictures say it all. We all know about Tiananmen and we all know that the Emperors lived in the Forbidden City - or at least you do now. So, just check out the pictures for the sights.
HOWEVER, what I really want to discuss is the popularity of white people there. haha. We were walking around these two sights for a total of about 2 or 2 and a half hours. Within that time, I'm not even exaggerating when I say there were about 50 pictures being taken by Chinese people of us. Now, that is only the number of the ones that I happened to look at while they were pointing the camera at my face. This number is also NOT
From Above 2
A view from the plane...again including the amount of Chinese parents who were literally pushing there kids in front of us as we were walking and trying to snap a picture really quick. It was amazing how popular we were haha. Seriously, the parents shoved their kids in front of us all the time and the kids were always screaming our way yelling, "Hellooooo!" You would think it would be annoying, but honestly, the kids were so adorable when they were around you - you were this amazing thing. As for their parents, if we interacted with their child, their parents would just light up like that was the best thing in the world. Only God knows how many pictures there are of us randomly throughout China from our 2 hour excursion.
I have 3 favorite experiences though. First, we had just gotten off of the bus and we were walking around Tiananmen square. We're kind of standing around waiting for a few minutes and we notice about 15 little Chinese boys (about the age of 8) staring at us with big smiles on their faces. One of them finally works up the courage to simply wave at us. We all realized they did
not know what to do so we all waved back at them. They were so happy and started yelling (as I said before), "Helloooooooo" in their best English accent/skills. We, naturally said "hello," back and they were jumping up and down so proud to be talking to Americans.
The second one happened twice. Basically, it was more parents shoving their kids in front of us. Except this time, the parents got the "courage" to ask us to take a picture with their children - or rather, they got the courage to signal to us. Then, they realized we spoke Chinese. So, here's how it went: They line myself, a blonde boy, and a tall American girl up and throw a little Chinese girl in front of us. They take the picture. Then, they think, "Why not get a picture with all of the kids?!" So, they throw about 8 more children around us. They take about 5 pictures of us each with about 4 different cameras and then all laugh and giggle and the little kids start speaking their very beginning English to us.....awesome.
Finally, we first get to Tiananmen Square. Our program, CIEE wants a group picture.
The Forbidden City
Entrance to the City. So, we line all 50 or so of us up with the entrance to the Forbidden City in the background. They start to take the picture and out of nowhere, about 12 Chinese people just decide that they also want the picture of the huge group of white people. So, we had one picture taken of us by people we knew and about 30 others from people that just ran up to take it.....again, awesome. haha.
Before this trip, I caught people's glances and stares, but never have I seen people act like this. It was quite hysterical.
Also, I have officially used the squat toilets more than once and what I feel is very unsuccessful. Granted, my unsuccessful is really actually successful but it is so disgusting that I want it to count as unsuccessful. The only "successful" there is to going to the bathroom is in a real toilet. haha. I'll get used to it. But seriously, if you ever go to China, DO NOT GO ANY WHERE WITHOUT TOILET PAPER AND HAND SANITIZER. You will not find either in any place you go outside of the international dorms - even in my classrooms....sad for
Me and Mao
Me flashing the typical Chinese Peace sign in front of Mao. me. Yea, there is nothing glamorous about it and they smell so bad all of the time. I'll take a picture of them sometime for you all to see what I'm going through haha.
Classes started today. I have kids from all over the world in my classes so that's pretty cool. Hopefully we will all make it out alive. Alright, I'm off to study.
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anonymous
non-member comment
HAH sounds like you're having a blast! Best of luck