We had a really boring flight after leaving Concordia, my school, at 6:00 AM on last week's Sunday. We arrived in BeiJing and drove to the hotel. When we got in the hotel, me and James (He was my roommate) put our stuff away, but James found this sign by our beds that I think will only be necessary in China.
We then hopped on the bus to go to a restaurant. It was the first traditional Chinese restaurant I have been to, and I am now believing Chet when he warned me about dizzying and spinning food. It is hectic. You try and spin the table one way, but your classmate is still trying to get food off of the table when it starts spinning away from them unintentionally. They either stop the table and I have to wait, or they hurry and grab as much as they can unsuccessfully with their flimsy chopsticks before they can't reach. The food was not worth it either. Maybe that is just because I am picky.
We then went to some BeiJing urban planning museum. This is some museum that has a bunch of cool maps of BeiJings and a slideshow of the future of BeiJing. I almost fell asleep in the middle of the showing I was so tired. Here are som of the maps and models at the museum.
This model was completely made of wood.
This 3D model continued into a printed map under glass on the floor. Way cool!
The teachers and the tour guides then announced that we were going to Tiananmen Square where the forbidden city is. I got excited until we got there and we just walked in a giant concrete circle around the outside of the walls. Yay.
We then went to a really good Brazilian Barbecue restaurant. Yum. Then I found that James was sick. He threw up afterwards. We then drove to the hotel, and I made him go to bed early. I was exhausted anyway.
In the morning, James didn't show a trace of illness, so that was good. We ate breakfast at the hotel then went to this Chinese park. These are some of the things I saw there.
This was the entrance to Ditan Park.
This man was painting water calligraphy on the ground.
These people looked like experts. They were playing a hackie sack thing with feathers.
We then were going to do a competitive scavenger hunt. We divided into teams and we went into the Hutongs, a maze of old homes with narrow alleys and roads. Here are some pictures.
This is one of the nicer streets in the Hutongs. I think the Hutongs are interesting because everyone has bad houses but nice cars, like the rest of China.
This is an alleyway entrance to the back of some of the homes.
This is a random sign on the wall of a run down bar. I thought it was pretty funny.
This is a nice bicycle shop in the Hutongs where you can buy different parts for your bike.
After the scavenger hunt, we had lunch at another restaurant. Another activity followed, but this one was super cool. Our tour organization owns a Hutong, so we went into the Hutong and learned how to make jiao zi, or dumplings. It is easy!
To make the outside, you mix flour and water. To make the filling, you can chop up veggies and maybe some egg, then cut the dough in circles and put the filling on top. Fold them in half and seal the edges, boil them, then eat! Simple!
Anyway, we then learned how to do the water calligraphy and we learned about Chinese idioms. What I want to tell you is about the dinner that day. WOW! It was so good! We had original BeiJing Peking Duck. Amazing.
The next day, we drove out to the countryside and did some climbing activities. This is what I climbed.
It is called the Via Ferrata, a French style of climbing. Before then I didn't even know there were different types of climbing. I thought there was just climbing!
We then had Subway on the ride to a farm. We were going to do some farm work, but it was raining, so we couldn't do that. So instead we did an indoor mini olympics. We had a plank competition, a pushup competition, and other stuff like that. We had more spinning dinner then went to the hotel.
In the morning, we had breakfast, then went to The start of the Great Wall, where my camera ran out of batteries. Great. I will go verbal from now on.
We were going to hike 8km on a section of the wall that tourists don't normally go. It was a part of the wall that has not been redone or changed from it's original position. It was really crumbly, so sometimes we had to cross parts on 2 feet wide stone by the edge of the wall. That was scary. We saw the insides of some of the watchtowers and the storage parts. To get to different floors, we sometimes had to descend steep stairs that were as thick as the width of my shoe.
At the end, we got to repel down the side of one of the watchtowers. I wasn't a fan. The harness hurt! The straps dug into my waist and it wasn't a tall watchtower.
We then hiked down a path to the center where we would stay the night in tents. The food was superb! They made lots of Western food, but they made them with chinese styles and seasonings! Yum!
We then did some team building activities to get to know each other like the human knot and other cooperation games. We went back to the center and camped in the courtyard in tents. Surprisingly, I wasn't cold even though it rained.
In the morning, we packed up, had the first disgusting bacon I have had, then did some more team activities. We had lunch in a plaza by the airport. They also announced there was a store near with the best candy in China, so that was a hit. Some kids spent more than $45 on gum alone! Are they full of money? I'm not sure. I bought some candy for Maddie, Larsen, Cole, Rebekah, Emma, Seth, Alia, and some Andes mints for Mom and Dad.
We then drove to the airport, where we found that our flight was going to be delayed by a total of 3 and a half hours! That was pretty boring.
When we finally arrived at Concordia again, it was 11:00. I drove home with a headache and a cold and then went to bed, so tired not event bothering to go to school the next day.
That was my trip! Thank you if you read the whole thing, and sorry I rambled on for a long time. I think that this is the longest post in Our Smash Blog! Yay! A new record!
-- Tate ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment