Beijing # 2

Rachel, Cami, and I went to Beijing together for our 4 day weekend break. We got hard seats on the train and decided to tough out the long 14 hour ride on a seat. We were quite brave and adventurous. It wasn’t too bad at all though. We sat across from the most darling lady. She didn’t know any English but would try and talk with us. She gave us lots of oranges. She was so kind and giving. There was a Chinese man across from me that spoke English. He translated for us and helped us be able to communicate with her. We called her our mama. She had the cutest little smile. She gave us hard boiled eggs. We were all scared to eat them. They were really extra big. The guy across from me told me that they were duck eggs. We asked him if they tasted normal and he said yeah they’re just salty because they let them soak in salt water for over a month. That kind of freaked us out but we decided to risk it and try them since she was staring up at us waiting for us to try them. They weren’t too bad. They just tasted normal except they were a little saltier. We had printed Christmas cards out for our families and on the train we were finishing up writing a little poem and decorating it. One of the guys by us saw that we were drawing and admired Cami’s skills. He asked her to draw a picture of him. She tried her best and actually did quite well. He was so proud. We met some fun people on that train ride. They were all so helpful and let us know when we arrived in Beijing and were supposed to get off.

I love Beijing and I’m so glad I was able to travel there twice during my time living in China. Rachel, Cami, and I decided to pack up our bags and head to Beijing for Thanksgiving. We left Wednesday evening and took a fourteen hour train to Beijing. We were on hard seats so we had to sleep on each others shoulders and it wasn’t the most comfortable night but it was adventurous. We arrived in Beijing at 7 am Thanksgiving morning. We were unaware that Beijing was about 20 degrees colder than Bengbu. We were sure shocked by the bitter cold air when we exited the train station. We had no idea what direction to head so we went in a warm restaurant until we could figure that out. A kind man helped us find our way. He was even so kind he left his warm food and went out in the cold to buy us metro tickets and send us in the right direction. He even gave us his phone number and said if we get lost he could talk to a Chinese person around us. So kind! The people in China really are so caring and thoughtful.  We made it to our hostel and checked in. We were on the fifth floor (we always have to climb so many stairs). It was fine, not the nicest place but fine. We didn’t have our own bathroom but the place was kept nice and so it was fine. For the first day we had to go to the forth floor to use the showers and bathroom. That wasn’t fun when you woke up in the middle of the night having to go to the bathroom…Anyways…it wasn’t bad. The people at the receptionists desk knew us because went down so many times and asked so many questions. We didn’t spend too much time there. After we got ready we headed to Kro’s Nest for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve never had pizza for Thanksgiving dinner but I guess there is a first for everything. It was so yummy though I won’t complain. Cami, Rach, and I had a delicious dinner and then went roaming the big streets of Beijing for the rest of the day. We had planned to do our black Friday shopping the day after Thanksgiving at the silk market, pearl market, and other knock off markets nearby so on Thanksgiving day we went and scouted out what we wanted to purchase. We stopped at Coldstone for dessert since they don’t have any pie in China. It was yummy! Tasted just like home! When I closed my eyes and sniffed I felt just like I was sitting in Coldstone at home! That was delicious. We headed back to our hostel then to get some rest for the big shopping day the next day! We woke up bright and early. Cami and I ran to Starbucks down the street and got some hot chocolate and a blueberry muffin! Oh boy was it good! We were sure finding some great food in Beijing. It was great! We soaked it all up while we could. We knew as soon as we were back to Bengbu we wouldn’t be able to find anything. We spent the rest of the day shopping at the big silk market. We sure bought lots! But we got all of our Christmas shopping done and more! We had a blast. Any girl would love shopping at the silk market. You can get anything for the price YOU want to pay. My motto for shopping in China is “Walk away if it’s not a low enough price for you, they’ll come running after you eventually.” It was so fun being in the big city! They had Christmas decorations up. We had noticed that one street had a bunch of Christmas lights on all the trees. We decided that we would get hot chocolate from Coldstone and walk down the street. It felt like a Christmasy thing we could do. When we started down the street all we heard was “come In here, free beer, strippers in here, oh girls you’d like this bar, come in, we want you in here.” What a bummer…This was just a street of bars. We pretended the lights were for Christmas anyways. The next day when Cami and I headed to Starbucks for breakfast we realized that Cami had lost her debit card! It was awful. We searched her whole wallet/purse, and then went back to the hostel and checked everywhere. We did some investigation work and realized that she must’ve left it in the atm machine at the silk market. We got ready real quick and headed there. We talked with the security people and found out it had been retained in the machine because she forgot to grab it. It was good news that no one had taken the card but bad news because now Cami couldn’t get out any money for the rest of time in China. Good thing we had made most of our purchases the day before. We finished up shopping and tried to soak up the big city before we had to hop on another 14 our train and head back to small little dirty Bengbu.