What a Day!

We were awakened from our train bunk beds at 6:30 A.M. The cleaning lady busted in our room, without knocking and turned on the lights. She then proceeded to take the trashcan and empty the trash. On our small nightstand of a table in between the beds, we had a small tray. All four girls had placed their jewelry on that tray. The cleaning lady tried to take the tray! Emma was literally fighting her for it. Needless to say we thought the Chinese Train cleaning ladies were crazy. Nobody in our group slept too well. Our beds were literally plywood. The pillow was non-existent, and the blanket was more for a newborn than a full grown adult. Although the experience was not very pleasant, it was still an adventure I enjoyed.

We met our tour guide for Beijing. Her name is “Li” and we love her already! It’s a tie between her and Jing for favorite tour guide, with Jerry coming in a close second, and Han way far, dead last. She took us to get our checked luggage. This process took close to 30 minutes. The government runs the train station and the employees get paid no matter what kind of work they do. Therefore they take their time fulfilling requests. Once we had finally gotten our luggage we loaded the bus and headed to breakfast.

Our tour guide thought we’d want a good American breakfast and gave us the choice between McDonalds and KFC. We ended up going to McDonalds. Surprisingly, I love McDonalds in China; however I never eat it in the US. I got an “egg burger”. This consisted of a sunny side up egg, in between hamburger buns, with ketchup. It was delicious! (Sounds disgusting, I know!) I think we must have spent $100 between all the students and professors at McDonalds.

After lunch we transferred to the hotel where we checked in and went to our rooms. The rooms here are also very spacious and nice. Free Internet is at this hotel too, hooray! We quickly unpacked, took showers and slept for an hour before heading out for our afternoon adventures.

We had lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. Chinese food is pretty much vegan with some dishes containing meat. It’s so nice to have a different variety of vegetables and tastes at every meal! My favorite today was the eggplant. So delicious!

We left lunch and headed to an old Beijing Village. Here we jumped on Rickshaw bikes. There were 2 per bike. It was like a miniature carriage. All the students and professors had a 45-minute tour of the old Beijing village on the rickshaws. It was so much fun! One of the lakes had frozen over. There were people ice-skating and ice biking on it! After the rickshaw was done, we visited a local’s house. The man was 78 and used to be an archeologist. He lived with his wife, two sons, two daughter-in-laws and one granddaughter! His house was considered very, very, very upscale. He is retired but shows his house part time for the government, for a little extra cash. He has had many famous people visit his house. Most days close to 300 people visit! Some part time job! His house would be comparable to the American lower class house. Even though it is historic, it was very small and not what American’s envision a house to look like. To know that this was an upscale house made me feel even more appreciative what I live in at school, home and what kind of amenities America has in general.

We walked all through the little village after that, trying to get a feel for the historic culture. It was so amazing. There were about 12 people with super professional cameras. They have the cameras like the paparazzi. As we walked by they began taking pictures of the Americans. It was so funny. We felt famous!

We walked to the Bell Tower, about a 10-minute walk. Everything in Beijing is farther away than in all the other cities. There is a lot more walking involved. Beijing is home to over 17 million people! How crazy. You can drive for 5 hours straight, and still be in Beijing.

The bell tower was really fascinating. The view was magnificent. I started feeling nauseous right before the bell tower. I tried to enjoy it to the best of my ability.

We headed back to the hotel around 4:45. Emma, Victoria and I decided to take a nap before going to grab a bite to eat. We didn’t sleep well on the train last night and were exhausted! We slept until around 6:30. We left to go eat “stick food” on the streets of Beijing shortly after that. I had an egg square, like I had in Chengdu. It was so good! I don’t know how they make it, but for 3 RMB, it was amazing.

We headed back to the hotel after that. Victoria and Emma are going exploring on the town tonight with some of our classmates. I’m still not feeling 100% and decided to stay inside, rest and not over do it. We have a busy week and I don’t want to miss out on anything!

The first day in Beijing was great. It is not as smoggy here as the news and people make it out to be. It is probably the least smoggy city we have visited thus far, which is surprising. It also isn’t as cold as I was expecting. It’s about 35 degrees. There is snow still on the ground that hasn’t melted from a couple of weeks ago. I think Beijing is a beautiful city and I can’t wait to explore more.