Hello!
Woke up, ate some breakfast and out the door!
We went to Tiananmen Square today. Took a bus then a subway, and I realized I like traveling by bus better when in a new city because you get to see more of the city. The subway is nice just for speed though. Without Sara I wouldn't have been able to take the bus since the route is entirely in Manadarin. Yay for Sara!
Exiting the subway station and seeing Tiananmen Square was awesome! After seeing so many pictures of this giant structure it was crazy to see it in real life. Sara also informed me that the road we were looking at is the biggest road in Beijing. Once again reminded me of Miami a bit. lol
We made our way across the street and through the first gate. The amount of people standing in line for tickets into the Palace Museum(Forbidden City) was a little bit intimidating, but the lines moved pretty fast. They offer a student ticket price, so we only had to pay CNY20. woot woot!
Once inside the museum the amount of people just seemed to increase. It was fine when just standing around looking at the outside of the buildings, but when we tried toget a closer look at the inside of the different halls it wasn't a lot of fun. People push and shove and they don't see it as being rude. Something I don't think I'll ever get use to.
I picked up an audio guide for CNY40 + CNY100 deposit before entering the museum and when it wasn't cutting in and out, the information about each hall was pretty interesting. I definitely would recommend doing that unless you read up about the museum a lot before coming. There is a map on the auido guide which has lights on it showing each place to visit and when you visit one , that light will go out. We found this very helpful. So much looks the same it's easy to get lost.
My favorite parts were the side areas which were a lot less crowded and the gardens located at the back of the museum. That gardens had some beautiful flowers called Mu dan. This is the national flower of China. Sara loves flowers so we took a lot of photos. Also in the gardens was the awesome stone mountain. The story behind it is that during one festival each year the emperor and his concubines would scale the mountain to the platform on the top. I don't remember what this symbolized, but it definitely looked like it might be slightly difficult.
At this point it the sky was black and we were getting worried about rain. We ducked into a small cafe, I got a caramel latte and Sara got some spicy tofu on a stick (which was actually quite yummy), and by the time we had sat down at a table it was pouring outside. It poured for about 30 mins and then continued to rain for another 30min. We just sat and talked and had a great time.
After we went exploring more of the side paths. It was around 4:15 and many of the exhibits were beginning to close. Sara made the suggestion of heading to a tea house before going to dinner with her cousins.
One bus ride later we were in an awesome shopping center! We had tea at a little teahouse called Chamate. It's one of Sara's favorite and is a chain around Beijing. They had a really cool ordering system where you just pressed either order, waiter, bill or water on this device at your table and a little bell rang alerting the staff to your need. Loved it! We got some small snacks, black fungus and a pancake. The fungus was.........yeah
Stayed and chatted till round 6:30pm and then made our way to dinner. (I know a lot of food) We had barbecue, which was awesome. This is when I got to meet her cousin Ariny and her cousin's fiance Le. We sat outside at this very low table with very tiny stools. Now this is not like our barbecue back home. Instead it is different pieces of meat on wooden skewers done on a grill in different spices and sauces.
What we got:
Squid - way too spicy for me. made my lips burn
Chicken Heart - my favorite! They were really really good
Chicken Liver- I think it was liver, don't quite remember. lol They were pretty good but a little chewy
Chicken Wing - A classic in the States and in China
There were some others but I can't remember them all. Really the only thing I didn't like was the squid. We also had cucumbers in soy sauce and lettuce in sesame sauce and washed it all down with beer. Sara told me that apparently it is considered rude to not get the guest (me) tipsy. They definitely weren't rude and I'm really glad that Le gave back the unopened third bottle (they were large bottles).
We went back to Ariny and Le's place to take showers, since we had no hot water at Sara's place. Now I thought that most Chinese couple don't live together before getting married, and I asked Sara about this. She said that what I thought was correct, but due to how expensive the cost of living is in Beijing couples are moving in together sooner now. Though she still said that her cousin and fiance are the "odd ones out."
Home around midnight and crashed in bed by 1:30am.
Signing off! Back to schoolwork I go!
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