After the gloom and rain of Saturday it was nice to wake up to sunshine and gorgeous upper 70's weather. Enoch and I decided to check out the International Church today, so that meant a slightly earlier than had anticipated morning. We headed down to the South Gate and hailed a taxi (my first in Beijing...yikes). Enoch speaks Chinese so it went smoothly...not sure how smoothly it would have gone on my own. He had a map of where the church was and that seemed to be good enough for the taxi driver, who got us to where we needed to go :-)
The International Church is a little strange. You have to show your passport and prove that you are a foreigner in order to attend service. But it was really nice to be in the presence of other believers and to understand what was being said all around me (English!!). Overall, I thought the experience was pretty good. Enoch didn't like it as much and I think he is going to look for something else, I might look for something else as well...but this won't be a bad alternative.
After we took a taxi home (taxi's are pretty cheap...it was under $3 for a taxi ride there and that included quite a distance to travel) Rob called to see if anyone wanted to go to the Old Summer Palace today. It was perfect weather so Ariel, Rob and I decided to head out (by taxi again...big taxi day for me) and explore. Here is a picture of us in front of some ruins there that the French and British destroyed
There were lots of great photo opportunities from the Old Summer Palace and I will try to share a few (well as many as this internet connection will let me).
Below is one of the 'water lilies' pictures...apparently we just missed the blooming season...but it was still pretty cool to see this massive collection of them...(p.s. yes, that's a boat trudging through).
At some point we came across some Black Swans...(much cooler than the movie by the same name).
We stopped for lunch in the park and I had one of the best things that I've eaten since I moved here. It was a crepe maker that they put a type of egg batter on to make a really thin egg layer...then they put in green onion, a spicy layer of sauce, some other stuff, and then a crunchy thing which I envision was pork skin or something like that and wrapped it all up. It was DELICIOUS! And it didn't give my stomach any problems :-) Finally we weaved our way out of the park...well I should say they weaved along while I was quizzed on how to do numbers from 1-999 and simple directions in Chinese...I'm trying hard...but it is not easy, but Rob and Arielle both speak it well so they try to help me as much as they can.
After arriving home I took a much needed nap! I awoke to people knocking at my door to go to dinner at the cafeteria. What...I can't! I've been on a cafeteria strike for the last 4 days because it just doesn't agree with me. But they insisted that they were going to the graduate student cafeteria...and that it was better...so I decided to tag along. I'm sure glad I did because the food was MUCH better. I had two of these calzone looking things that were filled with cabbage and vegetables. They were DELICIOUS...and only one RMB a piece! Now that's a steal (think like 15 cents each). I also had a type of egg mcmuffin sandwich that had meat in it as well (for 4 RMB) and another type of wrap thing with cumin chicken (or beef...one of the two) inside for 4 RMB as well. That's the general trend here...things with vegetables...cheap! Things with meat...a lot more expensive...dessertish stuff...a lot more expensive...but still cheap in American terms. All together this meal was 10 RMB...maybe $1.65 or so. (Note: An easy way to think of the conversion is to divide by 6...or think in multiples of 6...each multiple of 6 RMB is about $1. So 12 RMB would be about $2 because 6x2=12...60 RMB would be about $10 because 6x10 =60...now that conversion isn't quite exact because really you should divide by more like 6.35...but you get the idea). At any rate...this meal was MUCH better than the other cafeteria and I was glad to leave with my belly actually satisfied :-)
After dinner we were invited to a fellow faculty members apartment to celebrate the Midautumn Festival (we get Monday off for it here). All I know about this festival is people go CRAZY for these things called moon pies. Moon pies are these little cake like things that you can buy almost anywhere and they all come with a different filling inside. Since I can't read the chinese characters it is like a crap shoot. Some are really good...even a little sweet (don't get many sweet items here) others are DISGUSTING!!! Again, sort of like the Harry Potter Every Flavor jelly beans...the Chinese are big on this theme...for instance...beef in a cake...NO! NO NO NO! That just does not taste good...but if you don't read Chinese...you are bound to get one with beef...and trust me...it is BAD!
At the celebration some people invited us to go up to the roof...I can't remember ever going up to the roof of a building in the middle of a huge city...so I thought this would be a good idea...and it was! You can climb this little ladder right up to the roof of the apartment building and look up at the sky and the buildings all around. It was gorgeous and the perfect ending to a good night. We went back down and enjoyed some more fellowship before heading back to our rooms....but wait! Shoot! Have I mentioned we have a curfew of sorts? Is that strange? Apparently our keys won't let us in the building where we live from midnight until 6:00 a.m. We got home from the celebration about 12:45 and were locked out. Apparently when this happens you ring the door bell...cross your fingers, and hope that the night security guard who's job it is to sleep in the building right by the door wakes up and lets you in. He did let us in...but didn't look necessarily happy about it. Guess I'll have to try to remember that curfew thing next time.
Overall it was a good day...tomorrow I really need to prep some Calculus lectures.
Zaijian,
Gary
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