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Published: September 20th 2006
Olympics 2008
they're all excited here for the olympics, they're even selling hats already that say Beijing 2008!
I never elaborated on the bungee jumping. I wasn't really in the mood to discuss how much of a chicken I was that day!! I watched like 10 people go before me and the guy working said 1..2..3..JUMP and they all did. but when it got to my turn i stood at the ledge of the tower, looked down and thought what the hell is gonna catch me when i jump. He told me to dive as far away from the tower as possible and all I wanted to do was slide down the pole! I heard my friends yelling jump and korean kids saying jump please, in korean! I didn't jump when he counted and he was so cute. he told me to take my time, take a deep breath and jump when i was ready. But there was a line of people in back of me waiting to jump, so i felt bad. Finally I just dove and i can't really remember the actual jump except that my legs wouldn't stop kicking!! And I wondered why no one screamed, when I jumped, not a sound came out of my mouth, until after the cord yanked me back up. It
The Great Wall
self-explanatory! was actually a lot less jerky than I thought. And the rest of it was great, I screamed my head off. The pics didn't come out too well cuz it was dark when I jumped, which was really cool.
After two long days of a 16 hour boat ride and a 7 hour train ride, we finally made it Beijing. We were supposed to take a 26 hour ferry ride and 2 hour train ride but we sorta missed the boat....literally! it took longer than expected to get to the port so we arrived 15 minutes after they stopped boarding the ferry and they refused to let us on. for anyone who doesn't know...here's some very valuable ferry info......show up at least 1-2 hours before the boat is scheduled to leave! After freaking out and wanting to just go to the airport and catch a plane, we found out there was another ferry leaving that day to Quindo...a city 7 hours away from Beijing. So we hung out in E-Mart waiting for it to leave....it's the greatest store ever!! And luckily we found a Chinese girl to take us to the train station and buy our tickets for us......but
The Forbidden City
Some of the houses at the Forbidden City only after getting royally ripped off exchanging our money! All part of the experience I guess! So now we're in Beijing. we spent our first day shopping cuz why not! shopping was majorly lacking in the first 2 months of our trip. For only $80 I bought 3 purses, 3 pairs of pumas, a pair of pants, a shirt, a change purse and lunch! I love this country!!
the only annoying thing is that you have to bargain everywhere here...even in stores. when we looked into buying a cell phone, we bargained for the phone and the plan!!! so they overcharge knowing you're gonna bargain. and walking away actually works here, they run after you screaming new prices. they ask for $200 initially and they'll go down to $10! It's great and fun sometimes, it's just tiring having to argue for a better price every time you buy anything!!!
Friday we decided to be tourists and check out the Forbidden city.....for those of you who haven't been to this side of the world yet, that's basically a mini city with the royal palace where the kings lived for hundreds of years......back when there were kings. Except that we never
made it......don't worry we went saturday. On the way, asking for directions we met these 2 chinese girls who are art students, so we skipped the palace and went with them to their teachers studio and looked at her art. we thought it was cool to be doing something we didn't expect to do here, something that you don't find out about in the books, until we found out it's a common scam for chinese people to approach tourists saying they're students and getting you to come back to their art studio and buy their art......which we of course did! but we paid like $7 for a painting, so we didn't actualy feel like we were being scammed....but who knows. so a note to anyone who might travel to china in the future....don't talk to the locals....all they wanna do is scam you. How disappointing is that?!
Sunday we went to the Great Wall, which really is great!! it's basically what you've seen in movies, it's just incredible to actually be there because it's on top of mountains. the actual wall isn't as high as i expected, but it's so long, it goes on forever ˆÀ’è...oops chinese writing....it's so
much cooler than korean!. anyways, i didn't really get why it was built on mountains right next to each other, maybe for doule the amount of defense, but i expected it to be in more of a straight line, it looks like it was just randomly placed....but i guess 2000 years ago it made sense!! there were tons of people touring it, most of them Asian. I haven't gotten great yet at being able to tell Asians apart, so i think most of the people i saw were chinese but i could be wrong!
Monday we went to the Temple of Heaven, which is where the emperors used to pray for good weather and for lots of crops to grow and stuff like that. It was basically a lot of really pretty, old-looking Chinese buildings....i'm so articulate!!! what was great about it was that all the buildings were surrounding by something like 273 hectares of land. It was beautiful.....rows and rows of trees and flowers and open land. it was so nice to just sit and have a picnic....which we did! wow, we really are like a couple!
All the gorgeous sights make the country really pretty and
unique, it's just too bad they're modernizing it so much because of the olympics. They're obssessed with them....they're gonna be here in 2008. So everything's being rebuilt and a lot of the older neighborhoods are being torn down. I dont know how they'r gonna do it, none of the taxi drivers speak any english. Itt's not as hard as i thought it would be to get around, because we always find someone to help us, but it usually takes 4 or 5 people to find someone who will help us. and sometimes even they dont really speak english. I can't really see older, rich people takin g the time to find an english speaking person....I guess every translater will be getting a lot of business in 2008!
Tuesday we weren't in the mood to see buildings again, so we decided to find the Chabad here. It took us like 2 hours...it's in the middle of a slummy area, except for the section where the Chabad is, which is like it's own little town. and it turned out the chabad was just the rabbi's house! so we didn't even get to see a synagogue because it doesn't exist here, people
just come to the rabbi's house for services. and he wasn't around, so we basically spent the whole day finding the place to talk to the rabbi's chinese housekeeper!!! the night got better....we snuck into the pool at the Hyatt, which is right next to our grimy little hostel. it was the most unbelievably hotel i have ever seen. the indoor pool was made into a jungle, it was surrounded by trees and fake rocks, with a hot tub spilling into it on the side. and the locker room had another hot tub with a sauna and steam room. We took the longest showers there....the best and cleanest so far in asia!!! and we took full advantage of all the hair and body products!!! it was great, no one even asked for our room number!!!!
A couple things we've noticed here, Chinese people are very inpatient and don't actaully get the concept of waiting in line. They'll just come right up next to you and stick their money in the perons' face if they're ready to pay. The especially get annoyed with us cuz we always ask 21 question before buying anything! The most disgusting thing is that everyone spits like crazy. but they're not just spitting, first they hork (don't really know how to spell that!) it up from the gut...which you can actaully here from about a block away, so you know they're about to spit before they do it. and we hear it 18 times a day....it's gross. the city's pretty clean, except for spit everyhwhere! I didn't think it was possible, but they are actaully worse drivers here than in korea. they don't even slow down when making a right turn when they have a red light....even if people are crossing the street. it's like they don't realize that hitting a person walking could be a bad thing. I've seen at least 9 people a day on bikes almost get hit by a car or bus......as long as it's not me or marissa!!!
tomorrow night we head to Xian to see the terra cotta warriors. so that should be cool. k this has been quite the long blog....I'm out.
if you wanna see more pics, i'll send the link for the kodak gallery.
and if you don't wanna see them.....that's too bad cuz i spent precious hours in beijing uploading them for you, so you don't really have a choice but to look!
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!
Love Trish......and Marissa, I guess!
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debra
non-member comment
wow
wish i could be there. But with your blog, I have to admit, I feel like I am.Great stories, especially about the horking. Aunty Terry would appreciate that. Keep it up. Have fun with the terra cotta warriors. whatever, they are. We love you.