* 8/1/09 Day 28: Beijing *

Today was exhausting, but SO much fun. We woke up at 6am (after going to sleep at 3) to fly to Beijing. The flight was only 2 hours, but they served us breakfast! It was just some dumplings though…nothing special. When we got to Beijing, one of Joanna’s friends picked us up, and drove us to the Bird’s Nest. It was AMAZING. For some reason, I didn’t think it was that big…but it’s MASSIVE. We took lots of pictures around it and inside…they had big stuffed animals of the 5 little Beijing mascot guys, so I took one picture with each J It was a really good place to take pictures…so we took a lot. I wanted to go into the watercube and walk around the entire grounds more, but we didn’t have enough time.

After that, we went to lunch at a local Beijing restaurant. It was pretty good…we had a lot of dumplings again. I’m getting really sick of Chinese food. As much as I LOVE dumplings and bao, I can only take so much. The dumplings were really good though…I just wasn’t in the mood for them.

After lunch we drove to the Great Wall, which took aobut an hour and a half because of traffic. The Great Wall was SUPER cool, except it was totally cloudy and foggy today, so we couldn’t see much of a view. But it was still really fun climbing it and seeing such an old historical wall. My mom thought I didn’t know what they built it for…duh, mom. For keeping out the Huns! A simple history lesson I learned from Mulan. Anyways, the moms got super tired of climbing the stairs, so me and Joanna went ahead really fast to get to the highest point on the wall. It was so sad though, because as soon as we got to the peak, it started raining and a thunderstorm started. So, the moms made us come back down and they bought us tacky ponchos that didn’t really work. Plus since it was a thunderstorm, it was so cloudy that we couldn’t even see much from the top -_- But it’s okay. It was still really fun. I really wish we had more time here in Beijing…there’s so much to explore! But we don’t have enough time so I’m just getting a small taste of everything. I guess I’ll just have to come back later J

After the Great Wall, it took us 3 HOURS to drive back to the hotel..it was ridiculous traffic. We’re staying at the Grand Hyatt here, so it’s REALLY nice. My mom loves to stay in hotels that are clean, modern, and service-oriented, so she loves it here. We are staying in a two bedroom suite with Joanna and her mom, with a living room and kitchen. It’s SO nice. Such an upgrade from the Hanting Hotel in Shanghai. Man it’s going to be sad leaving tomorrow.

When we got to the hotel, Joanna and her mom went out to dinner with some of Joanna’s friends from Beijing and me and my mom hung out together. We walked down to Tiananmen Square (about 10-15 mimns away from our hotel), then checked out a night market street that looked like Nanjing Rd in Shanghai. It was really interesting. There were a lot of shops and neon signs, but then we walked into an alley with food and vendors and stuff like that. And they were selling SCORPIONS on a stick!!!! Omgosh it was SO NASTY. The scorpions were still ALIVE too. They were MOVING. I took a video… I wish I could upload it to youtube, but I can’t access youtube. Anyways, the scorpions were moving while they were impaled on a skewer, and there was other weird stuff like heart, liver, gizzard, and stuff like that. Needless to say, my mom and I didn’t try any of it. But we did see some Caucasian people eating the scorpions…they said ti was actually pretty good. Still not enough motive for me to try it though. Anyways, the night market had a whole bunch of other strange foods and some normal ones, and it was just so interesting to see all of it. There were also shops to buy stuff too, but most of it was the same junk...lots of tourist stuff like pandas, Chinese purses, chopsticks, etc. Stuff you wouldn’t really need, but would buy just because you’re in China.

After walking round there, my mom and I decided to eat dinner (finally…this was at like 11pm) at the hotel. There’s a restauarant on the 2^nd floor called Grand Café and it had fancy American food. It was sooooo good. They gave us HOT French bread, which I haven’t eaten in SO long (I ate all the end pieces), and we ordered a chicken Caesar salad, grilled turkey sandwich with mango chutney, and steamed vegetables. Yeah. Nothing Chinese. It was DELICIOUS. Oh my goodness I never thought I’d appreciate a Caesar salad so much…the problem with the food in Shanghai is that it’s so OILY and GREASY. Everything is DRENCHED in grease because the more oil there is, the better in Shanghai. It was just so refreshing to eat food that wasn’t dripping with oil for once.

SO yes, that was the day. We did so much and I’m SO TIRED…every moment I’m sitting down idling my eyes start to feel heavy and close. I’ve been up since 6am and now it’s 1am. I think it’s time to sleep.