Our first bad meal in China
Beijing, China.
The last few days have been pretty uneventful. Tuesday morning we were back in class and felt crappy. After the sweltering heat on Monday, Tuesday was very muggy and humid and there was a haze of smog hanging over the city. I got a giant headache as soon as we left the hostel for class and it just got worse and worse the longer I was outside. Class was miserable for both Steve and me because we realized that we had studied wrong! We studied like crazy over the three day weekend to make sure we were caught up with the rest of the class, but we didn’t study the characters because we thought it was only a speaking class (a misunderstanding with the administration girl we talked to who wasn’t so great with her English). Almost the whole class Tuesday was reading characters of the words we had studied, but we couldn’t read them so it was sad and frustrating. Afterwards we decided to get food near school since I was feeling terrible and I thought it might help. We picked a restaurant nearby that had both pictures and English translations on the menu. we relied pretty heavily on the English translations since it was such a treat to have them. Big mistake. The translations were done very poorly. We ordered Deep fried shrimp which sounded (and looked) delicious, but turned out to be deep fried tiny fish whose batter was sweet and they even had colored sprinkles on top! Totally bizarre, greasy, and unappetizing. We also got eggplant in a garlic sauce that ended up being cold, pickled, spicy eggplant with some garlic on top. It was incredibly spicey and just tasted really weird with all the vinegar from the pickling. It was slimey and gross. We were both so sad (and hungry… I just ate my rice) that we ate again when we got to the little restaurant on the corner near our hostel which we love. The wonderful food there made up for all the badness at the other restaurant, but we were out a good chunk of change since the crap food was also expensive (not that expensive by Western standards, maybe $8, but expensive for Beijing and for not being able to stomach it).
After that I decided I was done for the day and I holed myself up in our newly empty dorm room with the air conditioning on, the windows shut and keeping out the pollution, and curled up on the little love seat with my book and a blanket. My headache eventually went away and I had a nice 3 hours of reading and relaxing while Steve went to the urban planning museum. He had a good time at the museum where he got in for free since there was a special Canadian exhibit and they were letting Canadians in for free. He told them he was an American, but they just said close enough! He also got a free Canada pin and a baseball hat so now he doesn’t have to worry about haggling over fake designer sunglasses! They had a couple of neat exhibits at the museum, including a scale model of Beijing which Steve really liked.
Wednesday was a much better day. We studied better Tuesday night and so class went really well for both of us. We ate sushi with two of our classmates which was delicious but a bit over our budget. But who cares! We’re being much looser with our budget since we’ve been in China. We were so tight with the purse strings in South America that we missed out on some fun things. We’re not making that mistake this time! Plus with volunteering for a month with free room and board, we’ll be saving a lot of our daily budget money, so we can afford to splurge a little now. Wednesday night we hung out with some of the people in the hostel and watched the closing ceremony for the Paralympics. I’d never even heard of them before, but we ended up watching quite a bit of it since there are t.v.s on the buses and subways that showed the games. It was really amazing and powerful watching people with physical disabilities compete in what are intrinsically physical events. Some of them, like the blind soccer, were really amazing! The closing ceremony was a bit of a cheese fest with everything very over the top. We were hanging out with a couple of Australians and a Brittish guy, who all knew an amazing amount about the Olympics. We really got an education. The Brittish guy was interested in seeing the torch hand off since the Summer Olympics will be in London in four years. Coming after China in something like this must be very difficult. I thought they did a good job of making their little performance their own, but it was a bit ridiculous in its pop culture. But what can you do.
Thursday morning I woke up not feeling very well. I didn’t sleep well the night before and I had another bad headache. So we decided to stay in for the day and just study on our own. It was nice, relaxing day and I had some yummy wonton soup and an oatmeal ice cream popsicle which was fantastic! Who would have thought that oatmeal ice cream would be any good, let alone delicious! This country’s food just keeps amazing me!
Today has been good so far, too. We went to class and were a little behind, but we have the weekend to practice and catch up again. Our teacher is going to be gone next week, which is our last week of the class, and I’m curious about our new teacher. We had a delicious just a little while ago and tonight we’re having a date night! We got tickets for the Chinese Opera tonight and beforehand we’re going to splurge on Peking duck, the city’s big speciality. I’m excited both about the food and the opera. They were beautiful costumes and elaborate make up, and if we go to the theater at seven we can watch them putting on their make up! I can’t wait! I’m also looking forward to this weekend. Sunday we’re finally going to the Great Wall! We tried to pick a day where the weather report looked good, so hopefully it’ll be a pretty day for us. It’s our last weekend in Beijing, so we want to make the most of it.
We’re already getting a plan ready for where we’re going after Beijing. I’ve let our volunteer place (V.E.T.) know that we’ll be arring in Guilin in the beginning of November, so we have one full month to travel South through China and make it to Guilin. So far we plan to go to a little city that still has most of its original architecture, even a wall all around the city. And then to Xi’an where we’ll go see the Terracota Warriors. I’m excited about seeing the warriors especially since the first time I’d ever heard of them was four years ago in Berlin when I’d just met Steve. There was a traveling exhibition of them that was in Berlin and there were signs everywhere advertising for them. None of us knew what they were really, so I couldn’t garner any enthusiasm for going to see them. But now Steve and I can finally go see them and in China! It’ll be very exciting!
I think I’ve mentioned the funny crotchless pants that babies and toddlers wear here, but I’ve noticed them around more and more lately and I just feel like I need to emphasize how weird it is to me! When we were on the subway the other day there was a toddler with crotchless pants just sitting on her dad’s lap! And I’ve seen people still carrying around their babies without anything between the pooper and their arm! Why don’t these babies and toddlers poo all over their parents?! Or do they and no one cares? I mean really, there’s no underwear and diaper or anything. It’s just pants with a slit from right above the butt down and around to right below the belly button. This just seems like a recipe for disaster for me. I almost want to buy a little crotchless suit for my niece Sophia to see how my sister deals with it! I just don’t get it. Maybe I’ll work up the nerve at some point to ask an English speaker how it works.
Tags: Beijing, China
montarsig
The summer Olympics will be in London in 2012, not the winter Olympics 🙂
See, I really don’t know anything about the Olympics!
If you get Sophia crotchless pants the only time she will be wearing them is when you hold her!!!!! I have been peed on enough using a diaper!!