Leaving
Alright Rachel, time to find a new homepage for the next week. I'm leaving tomorrow (Sunday) at 8:30 AM, for the train station (the major/central Beijing train station). Our train leaves at 11:55 AM for Qindao, a (so-they-say) beautiful seaside town in Shandong province. I won't be posting for a full week. Hopefully I'll get back by Saturday, but in China, nothing's for certain.
There's seven of us. I think I've already said how I don't like the idea of being 7 - always one of us will be left out. But oh well. Nothing can go perfectly.
Melanie is applying for the Rhodes scholarship and she's writing up her essays now. It's past midnight. Her application must be mailed before Monday and she's leaving tomorrow at the same time I am. I wish her the best of luck in these trying times.
Had dinner in a new restaurant (new for me) which was pretty deserted but was actually quite good. The menu was all in Chinese but with Guillaume's help (he has the most Chinese out of all of us) we were able to order some good food that we all enjoyed - sweet vegetables, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, beef in tofu wraps, and chicken with peanuts. Delicious. The seven of us ate together in order to talk about the trip. Already Melanie and Candice are planning shopping sprees...
Today we did end up going to Tainanmen. "We" = Gaetan, Katia and I. The subway didn't stop at Tiananmen so we got off at the next stop, Xidan, which is a shopping district. There were supposed to be 50% off sales at Xidan so we looked around. The crowds were terrible. I took lots of mini-videos of the throngs of people with my camera. We went into one of those picture-taking cubicles. We could chose 16 frames and then we took 16 photos of the three of us making different faces - it was so much fun! We liked the pictures so much that we each got a copy of the 16 photos. It was great. The five minutes we were supposed to have spent simply checking out the sales turned into two hours...but it was good fun.
We walked among the hordes to Tiananmen, which actually wasn't *too* crowded. We took some pictures and went south towards Qianmen to try and find roast duck as a present for the people we're going to meet in Qindao. We were tired. It was already 4 PM. I saw some in the window of a supermarket so we went in and bought some right then and there. Turns out there's the same thing in practically every store on the block! We had to walk to Wangfujing, the station east of Tiananmen, since Tiananmen was closed. The subway wasn't more crowded than usual, I found.
Back on campus we went to the nearby supermarket and saw roast duck absolutely everywhere, and even in nicer-looking bags. But oh well. We were quite satisfied with our roast duck and I'm sure it'll do just fine as a present.
Bringing along a Vancouver key chain with killer whales for the girl who speaks English and who's hopefully going to help us a little getting around Qindao.
Alright, it's 1 AM and I'm so unbelievably tired. Wish me luck on my trip and I'll wish you luck surviving this week...
There's seven of us. I think I've already said how I don't like the idea of being 7 - always one of us will be left out. But oh well. Nothing can go perfectly.
Melanie is applying for the Rhodes scholarship and she's writing up her essays now. It's past midnight. Her application must be mailed before Monday and she's leaving tomorrow at the same time I am. I wish her the best of luck in these trying times.
Had dinner in a new restaurant (new for me) which was pretty deserted but was actually quite good. The menu was all in Chinese but with Guillaume's help (he has the most Chinese out of all of us) we were able to order some good food that we all enjoyed - sweet vegetables, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, beef in tofu wraps, and chicken with peanuts. Delicious. The seven of us ate together in order to talk about the trip. Already Melanie and Candice are planning shopping sprees...
Today we did end up going to Tainanmen. "We" = Gaetan, Katia and I. The subway didn't stop at Tiananmen so we got off at the next stop, Xidan, which is a shopping district. There were supposed to be 50% off sales at Xidan so we looked around. The crowds were terrible. I took lots of mini-videos of the throngs of people with my camera. We went into one of those picture-taking cubicles. We could chose 16 frames and then we took 16 photos of the three of us making different faces - it was so much fun! We liked the pictures so much that we each got a copy of the 16 photos. It was great. The five minutes we were supposed to have spent simply checking out the sales turned into two hours...but it was good fun.
We walked among the hordes to Tiananmen, which actually wasn't *too* crowded. We took some pictures and went south towards Qianmen to try and find roast duck as a present for the people we're going to meet in Qindao. We were tired. It was already 4 PM. I saw some in the window of a supermarket so we went in and bought some right then and there. Turns out there's the same thing in practically every store on the block! We had to walk to Wangfujing, the station east of Tiananmen, since Tiananmen was closed. The subway wasn't more crowded than usual, I found.
Back on campus we went to the nearby supermarket and saw roast duck absolutely everywhere, and even in nicer-looking bags. But oh well. We were quite satisfied with our roast duck and I'm sure it'll do just fine as a present.
Bringing along a Vancouver key chain with killer whales for the girl who speaks English and who's hopefully going to help us a little getting around Qindao.
Alright, it's 1 AM and I'm so unbelievably tired. Wish me luck on my trip and I'll wish you luck surviving this week...
posted by Caro at 12:44 AM
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