Journal Day 1: June 7th

Journal Day 1: June 7th

What did we do today?

v Got on the plane ~ 13 hours!

v Off the plane- through customs and immigration

v Meeting tour guide, got on bus

v Went to hotel- 2 person room- Natalie and I

v Dinner- strange food (chicken feet and intestines?! Maybe… I don’t know!)

<- Dragon fruit... looks like a white kiwi... tastes like a sweet- tart! So good!

v Went back to room to get stuff… left room key in the power slot

v New room key card, left hotel

v Wang Fu Jing Street

v Back to hotel

First step in China! ->

Prompt: Funniest 3 Moments, Is China how you expected it to be?

We’re in China!! After all of our preparations, we are finally here! One of the funniest moments we had today was while we were in Wang Fu Jing shopping street. I wanted to find a coloring book to give to my grandma, because she collects them from all over the world. Me and Natalie went into a bookstore, and looked around. A lady came up to us and asked us if we were looking for anything in particular. I told her I was looking for a coloring book. Well, she didn’t speak English very well, and didn’t understand what we meant. She showed us a Chinese learning guide and a dictionary for small children. “ummmm… no… you know a coloring book… one you … ahh… color in…?” (It’s our first day, it’s hard to communicate!) Anyway through our confusion and desperate hand gestures, the lady brings out a notebook with paper in it. Natalie takes the lady’s pen, and starts drawing a poor stick figure in the book. “Picture… in a book” The lady almost immediately begins laughing at us. She told us she understands what we meant, but that she didn’t have any. The language barrio is difficult to overcome; you have to think in abstract ways to make it work.

Another funny moment was when Natalie, Lexa, and I went to go find Lexa’s group. Lexa was supposed to stay with Team Swag… but she walked off with Domination (Cuz we’re awesome!!!). So we thought her group was waiting and looking for her in the market. As we were walking back through the market, we walked past this one vender. The vender was shaking hands with this one guy over and over again. The guy yelled out to him: “Ni hao, Ni hao! I love you too, but I really have to go!”

Some events were only funny in retrospect. There is a light power source that can only be accessed by leaving your room key card in the slot. Once the card was in the slot, you could turn on the lights. (It took us a long time to figure out how to use it… we felt the blond hair shining on our heads) Well… Since the card was in the slot and not on our person… you can imagine where the card was when we shut the door to go to the lobby on the very first night. Yup. That’s right… in the slot. Well, the entire group had to wait for us to get a new card, as we were giving the title “The first ones to lose their room card”. Oh joy. We also had a leaky shower…there was an inch gap in between the glass door and the glass wall of the shower. During our room check Mr. Schagrin announced we had what he called a “sh*tty shower”. Flooding the bathroom was added onto the list of things we did that day. When we called room service and told them our shower was broken, and we needed towels, they didn’t exactly understand us…when they came to the room, they brought one small hand towel and body soap. Because everyone knows soap is gonna mop up the water J

Living scorpions on a stick, next to fried starfish!

I was amazed at how much Beijing is like Chicago… ex: some of the building designs, some cars, etc, and how different the two cities are… ex: bicycles, venders, haggling, etc. China is definitely different than the picture I had in my head. China is more industrialized than I previously thought.

<- On Wang Fu Jing Street

I still can’t believe we’re here! J