Today was an amazing (and pretty long) day. It all started with O'Hare airport in Chicago and ended in Beijing. Right after our lovely 13 hour plane ride, we went through customs and got to our hotel. I didn't feel any jet-lag at all, even though it was probably some really early hour back in Chicago. When we got to our hotel room, we were speechless. It was a nice, two-story room complete with two queen-sized beds, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a skylight on the top floor. There were only two people to a room, so it was really nice, especially when we saw th
e glass door shower. The reason it was such a nice room was probably because of the Olympics, so I decided to try to not get used to how nice it was. Instead of crashing for the night, everyone headed to Wangfujing Street to see the shops and streets of China for the first time. There were red paper lanterns everywhere, and people walking all over. Excited, we headed into some sort of candy store.
It all looked so different, with piles of candy all over the counters. One store helper came over and said something to me in Mandarin. Instead of saying "Ni Hao" or "English?," I froze. I managed to eek out "ummm...HI!!!" The lady waited patiently for me to say something more, but I just turned around and walked quickly to another counter. This whole time Shelby was laughing her head off at my total fail. I still managed to buy some candy there for my friends back home
without too much embarrassment, and then our group moved on. Shelby needed to get a coloring book so we went into a bookstore to try and find one. Because of the language barrier, it was difficult to describe what we needed. Eventually the shopkeeper pulled out a pad of paper and pen, which I used to draw a stick figure. She burst out laughing at the simplicity of what we needed, and kindly told us that they had none. Even though we didn't find a coloring book, we were okay with it because the experience was just so funny. We continued to walk the streets with t
he rest of our group, when we met up with Ms. Greenswag's group. We walked by a food area, and I saw starfish and some scorpions impaled on sticks. The man at the food kiosk saw us looking and smacked the table. To our surprise, the scorpions started moving their legs frantically! They were still alive- the vendor fried your food right in front of you. I'm pretty sure some of the boys tried the scorpion, but I wasn't interested. It was one of my goals to try fried starfish on this trip, but I was not ready to try it on our very first night here! I would save that adventure for a later day. While we were driving back to the hotel for the night, I noticed these funky van
s all over the place. They looked pretty cute, almost like they were from the 70's. I guess people in China had their own car tastes. Something very interesting that David, our tour guide, told us was that China may seem communist to the rest of the world, but they actually view their economy as capitalistic, despite government regulations. When we got to the hotel, it was very dark we are tired, but we couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on! There were switches all over the place, but none of them worked! After a good 5 minutes of scouring our 2 story hotel room, we found a slot near the door. You were supposed to put your hotel room key card into the slot for the electricity to turn on, an inventive way to save energy. Satisfied with our discovery, we headed out the door of our hotel room for dinner and hear a click behind us. Only too late did we realize that we had left our room key card in the slot, and so we were locked out of our room! We went down for dinner and thankfully got another room key, and headed for the buffet table. We all just took what ever looked good, so when we returned to our table we had some interesting things on our plate. I had some chicken feet on the side of my plate, while
Shelby had some sort of intestine on hers. Alexa had unknowingly eaten the chicken feet, and flipped out when she made the discovery. Lexa was brave and actually tried the piece of spiny meat on her plate, while the rest of us just ate what we thought we knew. I had this piece of fruit there that was so good! It was almost like a sweetart in taste, and was white with black seeds. People said it was dragon fruit, so I decided to get some whenever we went to a fruit market next. Before we went to bed, I started the faucet to take a shower. Water began to spray all over me, the sink, the floor and everything else in the shower. I came out sopping wet and still in my clothes, shocked that the gaps in the glass shower were so bad that it didn't even contain the spraying water. Shelby called the receptionist to tell the hotel that the shower was broken, but the woman had a hard time understanding us. She told us that she would send housekeeping. I was the one to answer the door when housekeeping came. Instead of giving us some big towels to wipe up the giant flood, I was handed a hand towel, and shower gel. Shocked, I closed the door and slowly walk back into our room, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually we had it set up where all of our small hand towels were shoved into the shower cracks, stopping most of the flooding. After showering, both of us fell into bed absolutely exhausted, yet excited for whatever adventure was to come next.
Today was an amazing (and pretty long) day. It all started with O'Hare airport in Chicago and ended in Beijing. Right after our lovely 13 hour plane ride, we went through customs and got to our hotel. I didn't feel any jet-lag at all, even though it was probably some really early hour back in Chicago. When we got to our hotel room, we were speechless. It was a nice, two-story room complete with two queen-sized beds, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a skylight on the top floor. There were only two people to a room, so it was really nice, especially when we saw th
e glass door shower. The reason it was such a nice room was probably because of the Olympics, so I decided to try to not get used to how nice it was. Instead of crashing for the night, everyone headed to Wangfujing Street to see the shops and streets of China for the first time. There were red paper lanterns everywhere, and people walking all over. Excited, we headed into some sort of candy store. 
It all looked so different, with piles of candy all over the counters. One store helper came over and said something to me in Mandarin. Instead of saying "Ni Hao" or "English?," I froze. I managed to eek out "ummm...HI!!!" The lady waited patiently for me to say something more, but I just turned around and walked quickly to another counter. This whole time Shelby was laughing her head off at my total fail. I still managed to buy some candy there for my friends back home
without too much embarrassment, and then our group moved on. Shelby needed to get a coloring book so we went into a bookstore to try and find one. Because of the language barrier, it was difficult to describe what we needed. Eventually the shopkeeper pulled out a pad of paper and pen, which I used to draw a stick figure. She burst out laughing at the simplicity of what we needed, and kindly told us that they had none. Even though we didn't find a coloring book, we were okay with it because the experience was just so funny. We continued to walk the streets with t
he rest of our group, when we met up with Ms. Greenswag's group. We walked by a food area, and I saw starfish and some scorpions impaled on sticks. The man at the food kiosk saw us looking and smacked the table. To our surprise, the scorpions started moving their legs frantically! They were still alive- the vendor fried your food right in front of you. I'm pretty sure some of the boys tried the scorpion, but I wasn't interested. It was one of my goals to try fried starfish on this trip, but I was not ready to try it on our very first night here! I would save that adventure for a later day. While we were driving back to the hotel for the night, I noticed these funky van
s all over the place. They looked pretty cute, almost like they were from the 70's. I guess people in China had their own car tastes. Something very interesting that David, our tour guide, told us was that China may seem communist to the rest of the world, but they actually view their economy as capitalistic, despite government regulations. When we got to the hotel, it was very dark we are tired, but we couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on! There were switches all over the place, but none of them worked! After a good 5 minutes of scouring our 2 story hotel room, we found a slot near the door. You were supposed to put your hotel room key card into the slot for the electricity to turn on, an inventive way to save energy. Satisfied with our discovery, we headed out the door of our hotel room for dinner and hear a click behind us. Only too late did we realize that we had left our room key card in the slot, and so we were locked out of our room! We went down for dinner and thankfully got another room key, and headed for the buffet table. We all just took what ever looked good, so when we returned to our table we had some interesting things on our plate. I had some chicken feet on the side of my plate, while
Shelby had some sort of intestine on hers. Alexa had unknowingly eaten the chicken feet, and flipped out when she made the discovery. Lexa was brave and actually tried the piece of spiny meat on her plate, while the rest of us just ate what we thought we knew. I had this piece of fruit there that was so good! It was almost like a sweetart in taste, and was white with black seeds. People said it was dragon fruit, so I decided to get some whenever we went to a fruit market next. Before we went to bed, I started the faucet to take a shower. Water began to spray all over me, the sink, the floor and everything else in the shower. I came out sopping wet and still in my clothes, shocked that the gaps in the glass shower were so bad that it didn't even contain the spraying water. Shelby called the receptionist to tell the hotel that the shower was broken, but the woman had a hard time understanding us. She told us that she would send housekeeping. I was the one to answer the door when housekeeping came. Instead of giving us some big towels to wipe up the giant flood, I was handed a hand towel, and shower gel. Shocked, I closed the door and slowly walk back into our room, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually we had it set up where all of our small hand towels were shoved into the shower cracks, stopping most of the flooding. After showering, both of us fell into bed absolutely exhausted, yet excited for whatever adventure was to come next.
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