1st day (Mon)
As we departed early in the morning for the airport, we were all feeling the excitement of reaching Beijing. I've been waiting for this trip for a while. As we get to the airport we grab our tickets and look around as we have about a 2-hour wait until we board. In our search I found that they had a Popeye’s chicken. Needless to say I went crazy, I had been talking about craving Popeye’s for a long time and out of the blue, there one was. Of course I ordered a meal set as soon as it changed to the lunch menu (first in line) and it was as good as I remember. I was impatient because after I bought it I remembered that I had to still go through security. Everyone else waited to get Popeye’s when they got to the other side but I just wanted it right then and there so yes, my Popeye’s went though security and into the x-ray. After we got across I convinced everyone else to get Popeye’s as well. With our belly’s full we got on the plane and took off, after a little while I dosed off, as everyone else did, and was woken up by a flight attendant trying to hand me the in-flight meal. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t going to say no to food. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t very good (it was just pork with rice). After landing, we had a delay on the next flight, so we tried to find an ATM but that was unsuccessful so we just sat next to our terminal and waited for it to arrive. Once it came we were finally off to Beijing. We landed and the terminal in Beijing was very impressive. After finding an ATM there we headed outside to get a cab to take us to the 5 star hotel that our school had put us up in. one of the first guys that came up to us asked if we needed a ride and offered $100PRC per person (which was INSANLY EXPENSIVE) considering a pop is only $3PRC and a 20 piece meal of McDonalds chicken nuggets was only $24PRC (the exchange rate is not as strong, while Hong Kong is around 7.8 per US dollar the PRC is about 5 or 6, but things are a lot cheaper so it balances out).
We find a regular taxi that we get in and it takes us to the hotel. We walk in and obviously it’s beautiful, with bellhops coming up to you to take your bags. As we go to the check out we have a little difficultly but after a while we finally got checked into our rooms.
It felt nice to be in a good room for once this semester, as well as a real bed and a real shower. One thing that was interesting was we went out to get some dinner and we were randomly walking around and found a street ally to go down that looked like it had some food shops, as we walked down it we found some of our good friends from Hong Kong Baptist eating there. Ryan, the Australian, the Italians and Cecile, from France. So we ate some noodles with them as all the shops were trying to close. They all stood watching us eat so that once we were finished they could close up and go home. Well tomorrow we are going to the Embassy so ill let you know how that goes.
2nd day (Tues)
Had to wake up early today to go to the embassy, put on my new suit and let me tell you, I LOOK GOOD. So we all met downstairs and waited about 30 min to get a cab. But we only ended up about 5 min late to the embassy. It was pretty cool bc there was a massive line outside the gate leading into the building but we got to go around to the side and went up to a gate, waved our passport and he let us in. We went through multiple levels of security and through multiple doors that were at least half a foot thick. We sat down with a few diplomats, one specialized in economic affairs, one in political affairs, and the last one was from the defense department. They told us what they do and gave us some good advice as well as cleared up some culture barriers for us. We got to ask some questions, which they were all extremely knowledgeable. All in all it was very interesting and the US embassy was very nice.
3rd day (Wed)
The day starts off with an early phone call, Dr Cartwright had fell and broken her ankle. The day’s activities were off. So we went to McDonalds to get breakfast before 11. We made it there around 10:45, however they had switched to lunch already. This was pretty disappointing but we ordered anyways. After we ate an early lunch we headed back and rested before meeting Bennion at noon. Once we all meet up Bennion told us that we were going to have a private tour of the Birds Nest (where the Olympics was held) because he knew one of the people that were in charge of Marketing the Olympics. As we waited for confirmation we went back out to get lunch with Bennion, we found a subway and talk for a long time but about a lot of important things that we were going to do in the future and what the school has been planning for the future. Unfortunately the Birds Nest did not work out but we went to Beihai park and walked around. This was an amazing cite because this was a park meant only for government officials and the emperor. So needless to say this place was beautiful.
4th day (Thur)
So after going through the tombs we headed out lunch at this jade market. It was a beautiful place full of high end jade that costs thousands of dollars but they had some things that were reasonably priced for us college students as well. Lunch was very good and after we had something to eat we were off to the great wall. As we got closer to the mountains you could see some stretches of the wall in the distance. Some interesting facts that I learned were: the wall was once 4000 miles long but only 800 miles have survived the test of time, the second is that the great wall can not be seen from space, it follows a natural ridge line, not to mention the wall is not tall at all.
That was the biggest shocker for me, I was expecting the massive intimidating wall, what was intimidating was the length of the wall not the height. It must have only stood about one and a half stories high, 2 at most, or it at least looked that way. Also one thing I did not expect use how uneven the steps were. It was so messed up, I understand you have to work with what you were given and the fact that its going up a mountain, but you would be walking and have one big step up followed by another then all of a sudden it would be a baby step and then a few regular steps followed abruptly by another large step. I can’t imagine how many guards fell down or got injured just walking that thing at night; there was no organization to it, not to mention the insane slops. But never the less it truly was an amazing site to see. After all the site seeing we headed back to the hotel to relax for a little while before we went out to eat with Bennion. After a quick power nap we headed for Din Tai Fung, which was voted by New York Times as one of the top 10 restaurant chains in the world. The food was amazing for dessert we have this strawberry shaved ice. It was a large bowl of sweetened shaved ice with strawberries on the top and bottoms toped with a sweet strawberry glaze the melted some of the shaved ice, It was INCREDIBLE! Hard to describe but it was a dessert to remember. Bennion treated us to this dinner so a thousand thanks to him and the school for setting up such an amazing trip that I truly will never forget. THANK YOU SO MUCH BOWLING GREEN!
5th day (Friday)
Wow, how to describe to day: a lot of walking! We went to the temple of heaven (the most sacred place in all of china) then proceeded to the forbidden city for a grand Bennion Tour. So the day started off with us waking up early to go get breakfast, fun fact; every time I order something in McDonalds here in Beijing there is a complication, there are many examples but I will describe this mornings one, I went to the counter to order a breakfast sandwich and a hash brown, not difficult. I wanted orange juice instead of coffee because I was craving orange juice. So I order the sandwich and asked if I could have orange juice instead of coffee. She looked at me weird and said no. She said it only comes with coffee and that I could not get orange juice. After around 3 min of arguing with her on how stupid it was that they could not just put orange juice in the cup instead of coffee I said ok, I will just take the sandwich and buy and orange juice. She again said that I could not buy just the sandwich, the sandwich CAME WITH COFFEE. Semi mad I said fine I’ll take the sandwich and coffee and I want a side order of juice. McDonalds aside now, after breakfast we got in the cab and headed to the Temple of Heaven.
6th day (Sat)
Ok so things are not going so well. I am writing in a hotel in some crappy city called Wen Zhou. We left Beijing and were sitting on the plane and we were delayed. We sat in the plane for over an hour. Obviously not good when you have a transfer time to the next plane of an hour and 30 min. So we took off hoping we were not going to miss our plane. We landed and we had to take a bus to the terminal, which did not save us any time, then we had to find our luggage with 20 min before the plane took off, we had no clue what gate we had arrive at to get our tickets give them our luggage and go back through security. Obviously none of this happened, as we had to be checking our bags 30 mines before the plane takes off. So we were arguing with the people at the desk, who did not speak much English, because they said that it was our fault for missing the flight by booking two flight with a 1 hour and thirty min wait between the two.
However it was there company that we booked this flight through and it was there fault for the delay. As we were trying to explain all of this other locals were coming up, pushing us out of the way and shoving their tickets into the peoples faces and shouting, as if they were first in line. The ones behind the desk would then ignore us and move onto help those who spoke Chinese, since they did not want to try to communicate with us. We were all getting really mad because we had next to no money and were going to have to stay in some random crappy city that we knew nothing about. So after about 2 hours in the air terminal complaining we they finally set us up in a decent hotel for free with free lunch and dinner and free rides from and back to the airport in the morning. So we took the deal hoped in a bus that took us to the hotel. Wen Zhou is a very strange place. There are massive buildings being built (more like the skeleton of the building, just the frame) everywhere. Huge construction project but right across the rode was a small river with run down shacks that you see on the discover channel when they talk about third world countries. There is no way this city had the population nor did the people in the area have the capital to stay in places like these. I have heard of these ghost cities built by the government that our completely abandoned, huge shopping malls, the biggest in the world, with no shops in them. It looked like this place was similar to those in some sense. Once we got to the hotel we were curious if they spoke English because it was important that they understood what time we needed to have a taxi by to get us to the airport. As we walk up to the front counter we say hello, and they start laughing and speak in Chinese. We all look at each other and without saying anything we all had the same expression on our face "shit." So using my artistic abilities I drew a crude drawing of a taxi and an airplane and pointed to them and wrote down the time we needed to be there by. She nodded with a look that she understood what I was getting at. Relieved we figured out rooming and went up to see what they looked like. They were not bad, could be a lot worse, but they would certainly do for one night. Turned on the TV and there is only one English speaking channel and its some British news station. There was one movie on that had English subtitles that was pretty good. I couldn’t tell you the name of the movie if I tried but it was pretty good. After eating the free lunch which consisted of us and another group of 3 Chinese people that must have been in a similar situation, we went up to take a nap, which we were all woken up by knocking. It was one of the managers telling us to come down for dinner. It had only been like 3 hours and as me and clay walked out of our room we saw everyone else come out of there rooms half asleep too. So we slowly walked downstairs and ate, after we decided to take a walk around the city, or as much as we could. We bought some supplies at a local store with what little money we could combine to give us something to eat for the morning and sat around a large fountain, or giant cesspool, and talked for a little bit on what a strange day it had been. As we walked back we received so many stairs and people taking our picture, as many of them have never seen a white man before. Some teenagers walked by and tried to say hello, the girls in the group got nervous and laughed and smacked the ones that said hello so we just smiled and said hi back. You could tell that was the only word in English that they knew as they had repeated it about 3 times. Once we got back to the hotel we said goodnight to each other and went to our rooms. Me and clay stayed up watching weird Chinese TV and attempted to play Chinese hacky sack (it was a toy that we bought the Temple of Heaven, it is the coolest thing ever. it like one of the fake golf tees on the driving range with feathers coming out to keep it stable, with washers to provide weight and a soft rubber tip so you didn’t get hurt when you kicked it) we did this in our room for about 20 min (we were sweating pretty bad haha it was a good work out). After that we went to bed just to wake up in about 4 hours.
However it was there company that we booked this flight through and it was there fault for the delay. As we were trying to explain all of this other locals were coming up, pushing us out of the way and shoving their tickets into the peoples faces and shouting, as if they were first in line. The ones behind the desk would then ignore us and move onto help those who spoke Chinese, since they did not want to try to communicate with us. We were all getting really mad because we had next to no money and were going to have to stay in some random crappy city that we knew nothing about. So after about 2 hours in the air terminal complaining we they finally set us up in a decent hotel for free with free lunch and dinner and free rides from and back to the airport in the morning. So we took the deal hoped in a bus that took us to the hotel. Wen Zhou is a very strange place. There are massive buildings being built (more like the skeleton of the building, just the frame) everywhere. Huge construction project but right across the rode was a small river with run down shacks that you see on the discover channel when they talk about third world countries. There is no way this city had the population nor did the people in the area have the capital to stay in places like these. I have heard of these ghost cities built by the government that our completely abandoned, huge shopping malls, the biggest in the world, with no shops in them. It looked like this place was similar to those in some sense. Once we got to the hotel we were curious if they spoke English because it was important that they understood what time we needed to have a taxi by to get us to the airport. As we walk up to the front counter we say hello, and they start laughing and speak in Chinese. We all look at each other and without saying anything we all had the same expression on our face "shit." So using my artistic abilities I drew a crude drawing of a taxi and an airplane and pointed to them and wrote down the time we needed to be there by. She nodded with a look that she understood what I was getting at. Relieved we figured out rooming and went up to see what they looked like. They were not bad, could be a lot worse, but they would certainly do for one night. Turned on the TV and there is only one English speaking channel and its some British news station. There was one movie on that had English subtitles that was pretty good. I couldn’t tell you the name of the movie if I tried but it was pretty good. After eating the free lunch which consisted of us and another group of 3 Chinese people that must have been in a similar situation, we went up to take a nap, which we were all woken up by knocking. It was one of the managers telling us to come down for dinner. It had only been like 3 hours and as me and clay walked out of our room we saw everyone else come out of there rooms half asleep too. So we slowly walked downstairs and ate, after we decided to take a walk around the city, or as much as we could. We bought some supplies at a local store with what little money we could combine to give us something to eat for the morning and sat around a large fountain, or giant cesspool, and talked for a little bit on what a strange day it had been. As we walked back we received so many stairs and people taking our picture, as many of them have never seen a white man before. Some teenagers walked by and tried to say hello, the girls in the group got nervous and laughed and smacked the ones that said hello so we just smiled and said hi back. You could tell that was the only word in English that they knew as they had repeated it about 3 times. Once we got back to the hotel we said goodnight to each other and went to our rooms. Me and clay stayed up watching weird Chinese TV and attempted to play Chinese hacky sack (it was a toy that we bought the Temple of Heaven, it is the coolest thing ever. it like one of the fake golf tees on the driving range with feathers coming out to keep it stable, with washers to provide weight and a soft rubber tip so you didn’t get hurt when you kicked it) we did this in our room for about 20 min (we were sweating pretty bad haha it was a good work out). After that we went to bed just to wake up in about 4 hours.
7th day
Traveled during Easter. Got on the plane and slept most of the time. It felt so good to be back in Hong Kong! Once I got back to my room me and Greg unpacked, sent some emails and skyped, and then headed off to the gym for about 2 hours. Came back cleaned up went out for BK Sunday. Just got back from the grocery store, with Cadbury eggs, and finishing up some last min things. Off to bed for a good night sleep then waking up early to go work out again. Last week of classes then one more week off. Maybe backpack across southern china for some really cheap things (things in southern china are insanely cheap) plus studying for finals. Wow this trip is almost over...weird.