Dave & Geoff
Dave & Geoff, two friends of Pierre's, arrived Wednesday around midnight. They are making a trip around the world of around 4 or 6 months, starting out September 4th. They arrived at Beijing West train station, and were being asked by a young woman to go to her hotel and to follow her down a dark alley. Dave asked to use her cell phone to call the hotel in question, and instead, called me! I told him how to get to my university. I had prepared a room for them in C wing (I'm in B wing). I told him what to say to the taxi driver and half an hour later I left my room to go meet them at the entrance of my university.
My university is probably the cheapest place to stay in Beijing, at least one of them. It's 100 yuan/night (6 yuan = $1 Cdn) for a room with two beds, so 50 each per night. Dave and Geoff first booked two nights, but liking it so much, they are staying until their departure next Tuesday.
On Thursday (yesterday), we went to visit the Forbidden City. It was rainy. Not the greatest. We saw Mao, which was nothing special. He looks fake. His face is illuminated and looks like it's made of plastic. Chinese soldiers herd you past him. My theory is that they want you to hurry so you don't realise just how fake it is!!! The soldiers would literally push and pull at the tourists' sleeves to make them move faster, but they didn't touch me...yay for being White.
We got lost in the Forbidden City. I thought we got an all-inclusive ticket which would allow us to visit other parts of the Palace - the clock museum and Imperial Treasury - but apparently not. So we didn't visit anything other than the Palace. It was very impressive. But I'll have to go back when it's a nicer day. It's a lot of the same thing and we were quite tired.
Once back at the university, I got a group of people from my dorm out to dinner. We ended up being a group of 10 and we went to the "Pink Door" restaurant. Because we were such a large group we got our own little room - score! Dave drank a lot and made everyone else drink a lot (beer and soju, but mostly beer). He made friends with the three Koreans who were there. The food was good and we ate like kings for 220 yuan (22 each - less than 5 bucks!). That includes all the alchohol - and there was lots of alcohol. We were the last to leave the restaurant at 9:30 PM, and then the party continued in Dave and Geoff's room - everyone went to their room to drink. It was pretty funny...
Today we woke up around 10 AM, but I didn't want to wake up Dave and Geoff, and they didn't want to wake me up, so we both did our own thing in our separate rooms, until I went to "wake them up" at 11:30 - to find out they had already been to eat...at the Pink Door restaurant! So I had lunch with Katia and Gaitan, two French students here to study economics. We eventually left (Dave, Geoff and I) for a park from which we'd take a boat to the Summer Palaces in the north-west part of the city. Unfortunately, we arrived 15 minutes after the last boat had left! We were going to take a taxi there when the taxi driver told us the Palace would be closing around 4 PM - no point in going since it was already 3:30! So we went to the nearby park where we rented a peddle boat and peddled around. It was fun. Today's weather was a lot better than yesterday's.
Tonight we're going to the same club we went to last Friday - Dave wants to drink again and he can't believe it's open bar (even if it's only for girls). I can't believe I'm going there again...I'm going to be exhausted yet again!
Tomorrow we're taking it easy. There's a folk customs show that the university has organised to take us to ("us" being the foreign teachers and some of the foreign students), which is in the city tomorrow afternoon. I asked if Dave and Geoff could come and eventually they were permitted to come. It's to celebrate the mid-autumn Festival, which is Sunday.
Sunday, Dave, Geoff and I want to go to the Great Wall. That'll be an adventure, since Dave wants to go to an out-of-the-way part of the Wall. And I'll be more than exhausted starting my 20-hour week on Monday. Oh well. I'm in China. I've got to live it up....
Hope you guys are doing well and enjoying yourselves, wherever you happen to be.
My university is probably the cheapest place to stay in Beijing, at least one of them. It's 100 yuan/night (6 yuan = $1 Cdn) for a room with two beds, so 50 each per night. Dave and Geoff first booked two nights, but liking it so much, they are staying until their departure next Tuesday.
On Thursday (yesterday), we went to visit the Forbidden City. It was rainy. Not the greatest. We saw Mao, which was nothing special. He looks fake. His face is illuminated and looks like it's made of plastic. Chinese soldiers herd you past him. My theory is that they want you to hurry so you don't realise just how fake it is!!! The soldiers would literally push and pull at the tourists' sleeves to make them move faster, but they didn't touch me...yay for being White.
We got lost in the Forbidden City. I thought we got an all-inclusive ticket which would allow us to visit other parts of the Palace - the clock museum and Imperial Treasury - but apparently not. So we didn't visit anything other than the Palace. It was very impressive. But I'll have to go back when it's a nicer day. It's a lot of the same thing and we were quite tired.
Once back at the university, I got a group of people from my dorm out to dinner. We ended up being a group of 10 and we went to the "Pink Door" restaurant. Because we were such a large group we got our own little room - score! Dave drank a lot and made everyone else drink a lot (beer and soju, but mostly beer). He made friends with the three Koreans who were there. The food was good and we ate like kings for 220 yuan (22 each - less than 5 bucks!). That includes all the alchohol - and there was lots of alcohol. We were the last to leave the restaurant at 9:30 PM, and then the party continued in Dave and Geoff's room - everyone went to their room to drink. It was pretty funny...
Today we woke up around 10 AM, but I didn't want to wake up Dave and Geoff, and they didn't want to wake me up, so we both did our own thing in our separate rooms, until I went to "wake them up" at 11:30 - to find out they had already been to eat...at the Pink Door restaurant! So I had lunch with Katia and Gaitan, two French students here to study economics. We eventually left (Dave, Geoff and I) for a park from which we'd take a boat to the Summer Palaces in the north-west part of the city. Unfortunately, we arrived 15 minutes after the last boat had left! We were going to take a taxi there when the taxi driver told us the Palace would be closing around 4 PM - no point in going since it was already 3:30! So we went to the nearby park where we rented a peddle boat and peddled around. It was fun. Today's weather was a lot better than yesterday's.
Tonight we're going to the same club we went to last Friday - Dave wants to drink again and he can't believe it's open bar (even if it's only for girls). I can't believe I'm going there again...I'm going to be exhausted yet again!
Tomorrow we're taking it easy. There's a folk customs show that the university has organised to take us to ("us" being the foreign teachers and some of the foreign students), which is in the city tomorrow afternoon. I asked if Dave and Geoff could come and eventually they were permitted to come. It's to celebrate the mid-autumn Festival, which is Sunday.
Sunday, Dave, Geoff and I want to go to the Great Wall. That'll be an adventure, since Dave wants to go to an out-of-the-way part of the Wall. And I'll be more than exhausted starting my 20-hour week on Monday. Oh well. I'm in China. I've got to live it up....
Hope you guys are doing well and enjoying yourselves, wherever you happen to be.
posted by Caro at 8:26 PM
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