Wanderlust

Beijing, China.

Today Steve and I had a very nice day. I went to bed pretty early last night since I was so exhausted after all of our late-night fun. We did go to see the Olympic Green all lit up with a guy from our hostel. That was an adventure all in itself since we our attempts to get close were thwarted at every turn! First the special Olympic Stadium metro line was blocked off so we couldn’t take the metro in. Then we tried to walk in through the big park in front, but that was eventually blocked as well. We followed a road to get closer and take some photos, and then tried to walk down another road. Eventually we got pretty close, but were still behind a fence so we didn’t take any photos of us doing silly things (like pretending to swim in front of the Water Cube or speed walking around the Bird’s Nest. But it was fun trying to figure out where to go and we were proud we got as close as we did.

But today we decided to sleep in and spend the afternoon at the Summer Palace. I was a little hesitant about visiting yet another palace place since I had been so overwhelmed by the Forbidden Palace. But the description in the book made it sound so nice and it is pretty far North of the city center so away from some of the busyness down here. Today was really pleasant weather-wise with it staying pretty cool out all day long. It was nice to have a break from the heat and humidity.

Our first run-in with fame in China was while we were sitting outside a McDonald’s drinking a coke. We shamefully bought the coke from McDonald’s because my throat really hurts and I just needed either something really cold or really hot to make it feel better and the only thing outside of the Summer Palace was a McDonald’s (with tons of tour buses parked in the parking lot!). We were just sitting outside on a little bench by the door talking and drinking our coke, and all the sudden I looked up and this man was taking our photo! It was so funny! I’m not sure if I smiled or just looked puzzled, but he seemed very pleased that we noticed him and happily waved when he was done. We’ve heard a lot about white people (especially blondies like Steve) being very popular in China, but so far in Beijing we haven’t really experienced it. Steve was stared and giggled out pretty often in Peru, but this was the first time anyone took our picture, at least that we were aware of.

When we finished our drink and went into the palace I was very surprised with how lovely and peaceful it was. The buildings were in the same style but they were mostly all falling a little into disrepair and it added to their charm. Most of the other classic styled buildings we’ve seen in Beijing have been repainted and refurbished so they look a little fake and just too clean. But these were nice and I had fun taking a few photos of some details in the architecture. There were trees everywhere which made it in even more drastic contrast from the Forbidden City. I could spend days there just relaxing and walking around and I can definitely see the appeal for it as a summer getaway. One of the big attractions was also a giant lake that took up about two thirds of the whole area. You could rent boats and paddle around and we even saw people fishing and catching crabs. We wandered around for hours just talking and enjoying the day. At one point I was posing on a pretty bridge with another bridge in the background. Steve had just finished taking my picture and was showing me the shots when a teenage or early 20s girl came up to me all bouncy and asked if I would be in a picture. At first I thought she wanted me to take her picture with her friends (we’d taken photos for people earlier in the day), but it turned out that her and her friends wanted to pose in a picture with me and Steve! It was hilarious! I couldn’t stop giggling the whole time! I wish I could see the photos! The best part was maybe that they took quite a few photos and people kept jumping into the photo from everywhere! It was a very large group of friends. We tried to talk to them a little afterwards, but all we could really think to say in Chinese was where we were from. The whole thing was just so funny! And to think that we were still in Beijing when it happened! I can’t wait to see how much attention we get when we travel to Pingyao tomorrow night and later on in our trip when we go to some pretty remote places. I wanted to give them my camera to take a photo for us, too, but it made me a little nervous to hand it over. They were very friendly, but they could have very easily been very friendly thieves. Sad that we have to think that way.

All-in-all we had a pretty good day. Tomorrow we plan to go to a museum and maybe walk around some more. Our train isn’t until 7 pm, so we have all day to kill. Hopefully we’ll also eat Peking duck. We keep putting it off (we were going to go tonight, but there was so much traffic that our bus ride was painfully slow and Steve is pretty exhausted from staying up late last night, so we just got off at our hostel and grabbed some food) . I really want to shop, but I’m trying to resist the urge since I’d have to carry it for a long time! I’ll shop just shop in Guilin and ship things back!

Beijing, China.

Friday night we went to see the Chinese Opera. I was really excited about it after hearing the old men sing at the park and really just hearing lots of random people singing around Beijing–on the street and in our hostel. But it wasn’t really what I expected. The costumes and make-up were really beautiful and the choreography was interesting and incredibly precise which was impressive, but the singing was horrible! I’m sure people like it. Obviously the Chinese like it or it wouldn’t have survived this long (one would hope). And we even met a girl in our hostel who really loves it. But to Steve, me, and (apparently) the rest of the audience it was like listening to some sad, desperate animal slowly die a very painful and drawn out death. It was awful!

The opera we saw was really three separate skits (which was a little disappointing on its own since there wasn’t one continuous storyline to follow like a play). I don’t know if this is standard or just what we got. The first skit started with a woman (a.k.a. dying animal) singing from offstage. There were two screens beside the stage with the Chinese characters and English translations of what she was saying. She had escaped a nunnery in order to find her love and live happily ever after. The whole skit was her trying to find a boat to catch up with her love; finding a boat and having trouble getting on; and rowing around looking for him. We never met the love or found out what happened with them. But the saving grace of this skit was the old man rower who was silly and antagonistic to the annoying escaped nun. Half hour later we changed to the second skit which was entirely just one woman in an elaborate outfit singing and twirling around. It was pretty boring and painful and the audience (which consisted mostly of Westerners and a couple handfuls of Indians) got audibly restless. About halfway through this half hour segment people started talking and not really trying to be quiet. I was embarassed for my fellow Westerners who were being so rude to the performers regardless if they (or we) were enjoying it or not.

The final skit started out well with four guys doing acrobatics and running around. And then from off stage we heard a woman’s voice and almost everyone in the theater very loudly sighed/cringed. It was awful but sort of funny that all these people from around the world had the same automatic reaction. Luckily this skit was slim on the singing and heavy on acrobatics, with the woman ‘fighting’ the four men in order to get a sacred herb to save her dying husband. She won, of course, in a crowd-pleasing show of juggling and flipping. It was nice that they ended with a big crowd pleaser since otherwise I think most people would have come away disgruntled. It was all-in-all pretty fun, even though we didn’t make it for our Peking duck feast beforehand since we were both stuffed from lunch!

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Beijing, China.

What a long day! Today we went to the Forbidden City. After our usual breakfast of a giant bowl of ramen noodles, we headed out taking the bus for the first time. It was pretty easy, fast, and comfortable, so I think we might take it more often. We’ve been taking the subway a lot, which is also really nice, but it is often very crowded. I think we’ve gotten seats once and that was at night. Today was very, very hot. Our hostel posts the day’s weather forecast by the door every day and I guess I haven’t gotten used to the metric system yet because I didn’t realize how hot 31 degrees celsius is! There were also perfectly clear skies, so the sun was just blaring down at us. Steve broke his sunglasses in Peru somewhere and we’ve yet to replace them, so he was practically blinded by the bright sun. We ended up buying an umbrella (something we’ve been meaning to do anyway) which saved both of us, I think! At least it provided a little circle of shade.

We got off the bus near Tian’anmen Square, the site of the famous riots. It’s touted as the world’s biggest public square and houses Mao’s mausoleum right in the center (and supposedly his preserved body on display, but it might also be made of wax–a little creepy either way). After the mostly leafy squares in South America that had benches in the shade, fountains, and flowers everywhere  I was a little disappointed by Tian’anmen Square. It was pretty literally just a giant empty block with barely a tree or flower in sight (there were a few flower displays for the Olympics). Communist architecture at its finest, I suppose. We accidentally wandered into a park beside the square that we had to pay 3 yuan for (like fifty cents). But we quickly realized our mistake and backtracked out and then through a big wall (and under a giant photo of Mao) that marked the entrance to the Forbidden City.

The city itself was giant and crowded and was pretty amazing for the shear size and scope of it. There were buildings everywhere, all in the same fancy style (I have no idea what it’s called). I didn’t know much about the city before we went. We read a little about it–that the Emperor lived there and barely every left. And that the only males allowed inside the city were eunichs so he didn’t have to worry about them sleeping with his women. But from a tourist perspective I think I expected something more than just building after building like we’d already seen in different parks and at Prince Gong’s Palace. I guess since it was so extensive and so many people used to live there I expected more displays of how the houses were set up inside and what all the buildings were used for (they all had fun names like the Hall of Supreme Harmony or the Palace of Prolonging Happiness–that one looked like it was falling down or had gone through a fire or something! Sadly, the Hall of Literary Brilliance was off limits). Instead it was just building after building with soem of the main halls having a giant throne inside. But those you couldn’t go inside. It was neat, but a little disappointing. And also barren of trees which we painfully noticed since it was so hot! At the very end of the city there was an Imperial Garden which was pretty with very old cyprus trees being held up by metal poles! It added to the feeling that they were very tired and ancient trees (and also that at any moment one could fall on our head!) I had a nice time taking photos of some of the little details around the palace, though. I think the little touches here and there like door knockers or the ends of the eaves are much more interesting after a while than the big picture. In the big picture all the buildings look the same, but focused in they’re more personal.

After making it through we were both completely drained of energy and starving! We ended up eating at a restaurant close to the city so a little more expensive, but still very good. We got eggplant yet again. I really love eggplant. And each time we’ve ordered it it’s been cooked differently so it doesn’t even feel like we’re eating it a lot. I also finally figured out that in our travel book eggplant is called aubergine. It’s a Brittish book and apparently they don’t call eggplant, eggplant. I think aubergine might also be French and Spanish since in Ecuador our hostel in Quito was L’Aubergine and had an eggplant by it. I’m learning so much about the world!

When we finally made it back to our hostel we turned up the air conditioner and I was asleep before Stephen made it back from the bathroom! I had a headache from all the sun and was just completely pooped out. Now it’s getting close to eight here and neither of us is hungry since we had such a late lunch, so we might not get dinner tonight. Maybe we’ll pick up a snack later if we need one. Tomorrow morning we go back to class, and I’m excited! Today we had the day off because of the holiday yesterday and we’re making up for it by having class this Saturday. We’re going to try to go to the Great Wall on Sunday since it’ll be our last full day in Beijing, unless we stay longer after the class is over. But we probably won’t unless we don’t make it to the wall on Sunday. There’s so much to see before going to Guilin. We have a rough itinerary of what we want to see planned out, so that’s good. But we’re flexible, as always.

We had to change rooms in our hostel since a group of eight had reservations for our room. It’s a bit of a bummer since our other room was so nice. This room is small and crowded with four sets of bunkbeds and it was a complete mess (and smelly) when we got in there. The source of the mess left this morning (we’ve stayed there two nights so far) and the other bunkmate moved to a different room, so we were able to clean up after his mess. I think the worse thing about all of his trash was that most of it was half full bottles of water. Such a waste. The big group is leaving on Wednesday and we’ve already arranged to move back to our old room. Even without the messy guy this room is still right in front of the check in area so we literally have to walk through people whenever we want to get in or out. It’s annoying. Especially in the morning when you’re half asleep and you have to walk through everyone to get to the bathroom. Oh well. Two more nights in the crappy room and then we move back to our nice big quiet room away from all of the hub bub.

Beijing, China.

Today (Sunday) is the mid-autumn festival in China. It’s a festival celebrating family through the idea that on this day the moon is at its fullest and biggest and even if your family is far away you can all look at the same moon and feel closer together. Tonight I will be looking at the moon and thinking of my family who are usually pretty far away since they live across the U.S. from me, but are now very, very far away. So far that they can’t even look at the moon at the same time as me! But that’s okay. It’ll be a nice symbolic gesture all the same. On this day Chinese people also eat and share moon cakes. Moon cakes are little round cakes with Chinese characters decorating the top and filled with different things like nuts and fruits. We accidentally ate one at a bakery a few days ago not realizing what it was and they were okay. So instead of eating a moon cake today we’re going to get a moon ice cream cake from the dairy queen near our hostel! We’ve seen lots of people coming out of there with little, hand-sized moon ice cream cakes and it seems like a nice way to get a yummy ice cream treat while also celebrating the holiday!

Today we’ve decided to be lazy. After days of walking around the very large city seeing sites, we need a break. Yesterday we walked around the different shopping districts looking at everything from pearls and jade to giant replicas of the terracota warriors and silk clothing. Some of the malls are very geared towards tourists with everyone yelling at you “Hey Lady, so pretty, try on jewelry!” I’ve never been called “lady” so many times in my life. I don’t think I like it. But some of the other stores were very relaxed and we weren’t bothered too much. I bought a little calligraphy kit and a book to practice writing some of the Chinese characters I’m learning. We went to a trial Chinese class on Friday and even though we missed four lessons (it started on Monday), we did pretty well so decided to stay and keep taking it for the next two weeks. It was a real bargain at only 300 yuan each for 10 classes, 1 1/2 hours a class. In U.S. dollars that’s about $3/hour! There are three other girls in our class and they all seem very nice. So I think we’re going to really enjoy it. Already it’s been very helpful in just making sure we’re pronouncing the couple words we already knew correctly! And we learned a few new things like asking someone’s name and how are you. I’m really enjoying it, and I’m exciting about also learning the characters to help decipher some of the signs or write things down if I can’t remember how to pronounce them!

But I guess we’re not going to be completely lazy today since we’re going to start planning out where we’re going to go after Beijing and when we think we’ll arrive in Guilin so we can let the volunteering place know to expect us. We’re thinking about planning on being there around the beginning of November and then if we run out of time on the way down to see everything we want to see we can always go on weekend excursions to places nearby Guilin or go to the places we missed that are farther away after our month of volunteering.

We took a day off of site seeing yesterday, too, and opted for the shopping since we were both getting burnt out on the Chinese architecture. The same thing happened to me in Italy when we were visiting lots of museums. After a while I just couldn’t appreciate the artwork anymore. It all started to look the same. And with the Chinese architecture and Buddhist statues, they all sort of look the same, so the burn out hit me quicker this time. I think we’ll probably go to the Forbidden city tomorrow or next weekend in order to have a full day there but also to appreciate it better. Our Chinese lessons take up the whole morning between getting there and getting back, so we only have a few full days in order to do the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Everything else we want to see can be done in the afternoons.

Gina. Beijing, China.

Yesterday was another great day! It was sunny and we even had blue skies which I think is quite a rarity since the city is supposed to be so polluted. I think the clean up for the Olympics has done a lot of good because so far it doesn’t seem very dirty or polluted. It might have helped that we got rained on quite a bit our first day here. Lima was much more dirty and harder on my sinuses, but that might be because it was in a desert where it never rained and all the dirt just built up.

Our new hostel is very nice. It’s called the Red Lantern House and the rooms are set around a pretty indoor courtyard that is covered in hanging red lanterns and other decorations. There’s even a little fish pond with a tiny bridge over it! Our room is very nice. It’s an 8 bed dorm, but it’s broken up into two floors. We even have a little sitting area and lots of windows. We took the downstairs even though it has bunk beds because there was already someone upstairs and it felt weird to impose on them since the whole downstairs is empty. It turns out that he’s from Peru and I plan to ask him all of my silly questions! He seems very friendly and is here studying so will be staying for four months. Hopefully we’ll learn his name and get to know him. He speaks perfect English and we wonder if he has lived in the U.S.

Yesterday we had our new hostel call around about Chinese lessons. The young girl who works the help desk was very confused about why we wanted to learn Chinese! It was a pretty funny conversation with me trying to explain that it would make traveling easier and her telling me that everyone speaks English! But we’ve already found that ordering in restaurants without pictures is difficult and we would just like to be able to pick different things other than just the handful on the menu with a picture attached. Finally an older lady at the hostel gave me information and a nice letter in Chinese for a university near by. But once we got there it turned out that her contact no longer worked there and that it was actually a sports college! They all seemed to think we were crazy for coming there for Chinese lessons! They do give Chinese lessons, but to their foreign students that are part of the sports program. They called the teacher anyway to find out if they would take us, but it was very expensive. We went to an information office nearby where we’d gotten a map the day before to ask them, and they were very helpful. They called a school and found out the price and where it was. It’s a more reasonable price, we think, but afterwards we were both unsure if the price she gave us was for the whole two weeks or for a day! So we need to call again or go by to arrange things.

Today we’re going to try to take it a little easier on the walking since both of us are very stiff with tired feet from the past couple of days! Beijing is pretty flat, which is great, but it’s also very, very big and we’ve been walking everywhere. After lunch (a delicious eggplant and pork stir fry and some yummy veggies) we went to Beihai Park and walked around. It was such a beautiful day and there were lots of people out walking around the giant lake in the middle of the park under the trees. There were a lot of old buildings and things to see around the lake. Supposedly the park was created originally by Kubla Khan, which is pretty cool. We had fun watching people play Go (a neat Chinese strategy game with black and white chips that look like Mentos… I’m hungry!), exercise, sing and dance. We sat for a while in a gazebo on the water where a group of older men were singing. It was enchanting. Their voices sounded so good together and the acoustics in the gazebo were so amazing–whenever they would crescendo the whole gazebo would fill with their voices. It was beautiful. We had a cute exchange with a toddler and an old woman. The old woman whispered to the little girl things like “hi” and “hello” and then she would say them loudly to us and we’d laugh and say them back. She was very excited about talking to us.

I’ve noticed that a lot of babies and toddlers have either shaved heads or very, very short hair. They also often have crotchless pants instead of diapers so they can just go where they stand! I remember my friend Rachael crying when she first had to cut her little boy’s hair… cultural differences!

We bravely (and sort of desperately, we were starving!) chose a restaurant for dinner that didn’t have pictures. But we chose a dish from someone else’s table and used our phrase book to ask the waitress to suggest something that was cheaper, and it turned out really well.

All of this talk about food has made me realize how hungry I am. We’ve been going to bed very early (we made it to nine last night!) which means waking up early. We got up at 7:30 this morning and now it’s 9 and I’ve been typing away without any breakfast. I’m sure we’ll have more adventures today for me to write about later.

Gina. Beijing, China.

So far I’m completely in love with China! Yay! Granted, it’s only been one full day, but in that one full day we ate two amazingly delicious meals (and one giant bowl of ramen, which was good, but was still just ramen), walked around our area of the city successfully, went to Prince Gong’s Palace and took in the beautiful architecture, and found a new hostel that’s cheaper than the one we’re staying in now and where we’ll be able to stay in the same room (right now we’re in dorms, but they’re not mixed!). We’re thinking about staying and taking Chinese lessons, which we think we’d want to do for around two weeks. We’re going to look at our options today. So far I’ve been surprised by how much is in English here. I think it’s probably in part to do with the fact that we’re in the capital city and they’re hosting the Olympics. But a lot of public signs, street names, and subway stops are all in Chinese characters, pinyin (phonetic guide to pronouncing the characters in Roman letters) and then English. But we realize that once we get outside of Beijing and when we’re not in other major cities, we’ll probably be without the English help. So far with the help of our books and a very small recording of phrases I downloaded onto our iPod, we’ve been trying to learn the words for “hello,” “thank you,” and “no.” The big stumbling block is that since Mandarin Chinese is tonal, we’re having a hard time knowing if we’re pronouncing things right. If we’re pronouncing them with the wrong tone, we could be saying something completely different! Hello seems pretty simple and it’s the word we’ve heard the most from store owners, so that helps us practice. No has worked a few times in getting rickshaw drivers to stop following us trying to get us to go for a ride! And thank you I just don’t know about. The big problem for me with the tone thing, is that I naturally use tone when I speak to indicate a question, or excitement, or whatever. So I’m unsure of how to say thank you to someone and saw sincere and nice without changing the tone of the word! But I’m sure I’ll get it eventually!

The flight over here was surprisingly pleasant. We had a two hour flight to Vancouver, Canada where we hung out for two hours and then had an 11 1/2 hour flight to Beijing. We left at 8 a.m., but we had to get up at 4 a.m. in order to get to the airport in time. It helped that we were really tired, I think. We both slept a bit on the second plane. We flew with Air Canada, and we had our own t.v.s on the seat in front of us with a giant selection of movies and t.v. shows to watch which kept us pretty entertained. The Vancouver airport so far wins my award for the nicest airport I’ve ever been to. It was beautifully decorated with a natural theme–there was literally a river going through the middle of airport completely with a little waterfall and little statues of salmon swimming upstream. And the river ended in a gorgeous fish tank that I think was supposed to represent the ocean. It was gorgeous, and I wanted to stand in front of the fish tank forever!

The Beijing airport was very clean and shiny. We got through everything very easily, got our bags, grabbed money out of an ATM (2,000 yuan! I love different currencies. The exchange rate is around 6.7 right now, so you do the math of how much US $ that is), and headed for the new train that takes you from the airport (which is pretty far out of town) right into a subway stop. There were machines for getting tickets for the train and the subway which had an English option, so that went really smoothly. We even helped out another lady with the machine. I think living in San Francisco and using the buses and train all of the time has really made things easier while traveling with this sort of transportation. We had found a hostel in our book that was near the subway, so we walked over and easily got a room in dorms. It helped that they spoke English! We’re changing hostels today to one that’s cheaper, nicer (seemingly), and where we can stay in the dorm together. We even wandered out and found food since we were both exhausted and starving. I had a yummy bowl of noodle soup that made me feel warm and extra sleepy! We both passed out around 7:30, but considering it was very late at night the day before for us, I think we did pretty well.

Yesterday we had a delicious breakfast by pointing at pictures on the menu! We ended up with two dishes that were sort of spicy, but I suffered through and it wasn’t really that bad. The rice helped and so did the iced green tea we got. It was very cooling on my tongue. The food is so good! We’re staying just north of the center and this area is pretty calm and not very crowded. It’s surrounded by hutong (alley) neighborhoods that are more original to the city. They’ve been tearing them down to make more modern buildings, but this area has been declared a heritage site, so it’s going to stay unchanged. It’s fun (and confusing) to wander around in the alleys and see “real life.” Our new hostel is actually in one of the hutong neighborhoods, but it’s also very close to some main roads so we’ll be able to navigate (or really I’ll be able to navigate… Steve is incredibily good with directions and I’m incredibly good at following him around!).

We walked around this pretty park area that was two giant man-made lakes surounded by weeping willows and other trees. There are a lot of classic buildings in the Chinese architectural style. Sadly, China town in San Francisco and the world area at Disney World has made the architecture seem almost fake! I think I’ll get over it, though, since the buildings here are sometimes incredibly old and are constructed much better. I guess it does say something for the authenticity of the reproductions in the U.S., though.

Coming to China (almost) directly from South America has made me notice things I don’t think I would have otherwise. People here are very thin. I don’t know if it’s just because we’re in a big city (people in the capitals of Peru and Ecuador were thinner than elsewhere), but I feel like Asian people are generally more healthy than Westerners. We’ve noticed lots of people exercising around the city–either in the parks or on little metal exercise stands that look like children’s play gyms that are scattered around the city. There are also no stray dogs here. There were stray dogs everywhere in S. America but no stray cats. Here there are more cats. I don’t know if the lack of dogs is because dog is commonly seen on menus or if it’s due to the cleaning up of the city in preparation for the Olympics, but I have noticed. And it makes me wonder again why there weren’t stray cats in S. America. Do they eat them? Do the stray dogs eat them? I might never know.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of people here wear glasses, which makes me realize that I didn’t see anyone wearing glasses in S. America. Do they just have excellent eye sight? Can’t afford glasses/eye exams? Prefer contacts?

And of course the giant difference in food is the most obvious of all! There are so many vegetables and varieties of ingredients, sauces, and cooking styles! And everything is so very, very good. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat in a Chinese restaurant in the States again after this! I’ll have to take some cooking lessons at some point in the trip so I can maybe make some of the food at home.

It’s fun noticing the differences between S. America and China. And the U.S. and the places we’re traveling to. It’s also fun to speculate about what they are the way they are. But I wish I could get some answers! Hopefully we’ll learn some Chinese and I can ask people.

Steve and my roles are already reversing a little since we’ve come here. In S. America Steve was forced to talk to people since he knew some Spanish, and that was very unnatural for him since he’s sort of shy about approaching people. I did all of the planning, which was fun in a way but also stressful since I knew where I wanted to go but couldn’t get us there since I’m so bad at navigating. Now in China we’re both lost with the language, but I’m braver about approaching people and either pointing or acting things out and Steve is taking the lead in where we should go and what we should see. I haven’t even started reading our China travel book other than to read the parts on the places we’re visiting while we’re actually there! It’s nice. It’s much more natural and less stressful for us. I really thought China would be incredibly stressful, but so far it’s much more pleasant and relaxing, and I’m so glad for that! I’m sure we’ll have more problems once we actually try to get around other than on our own legs, but hopefully by then we’ll have some Chinese skills to aid us!

I’ve just finished uploading the very last of the South America photos, so they’re all there for your viewing pleasure!

Gina. Petaluma, California.

Steve and I are back in the states for a few days of seeing family and friends and doing some chores like applying to graduate school (for Gina), buying books for China, and repacking our bags. We’re making some changes on the packing front– we’ve gotten rid of almost all of our first aid stuff. We never used it, and if we would’ve needed it there were pharmacies everywhere and I’m sure it’ll be the same where ever we go. People get hurt and get sick no matter where they live. We’re also ditching our sleeping bags. We always sort of knew that they might not be necessary, but we camp a lot anyway, so buying them wasn’t a waste. We’re still taking our sleep sheets which were incredibly useful (thanks Nana!) and we’re going to take a couple of travel fleece blankets that are much smaller and lighter than the sleeping bags and we wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving them behind somewhere if we never use them. I’m taking more clothes. I didn’t really think through the whole two pants thing–the downside is that when you do laundry you still have to wear one pair of pants, so one pair would be clean and the other would be very, very dirty. I’m also taking more and different shirts. I tied to follow all of the packing rules I read about only taking two shirts, but I want to be comfortable and to not smell bad. These things are important to me. And while washing undies was quick and easy in sinks, washing pants and shirts was not so quick or so easy so we didn’t do it (socks were impossible to dry, so I’m taking some more of those, too).

Steve and I are both really excited about China. We’ve bought a lot of books. Whatever we’re losing in weight from getting rid of stuff I think we’re making up for in books! We ended up with the Rough Guide to China book. It was a hard decision between the Lonely Planet version and this one. The deciding factors were that we were familiar and happy with the Rough Guide’s style since we used them for Ecuador and we did a fake trial run with each book pretending that we’d just arrived in a city and trying to figure out how to get around, where to sleep, and where to eat and looking at the maps to see if we could navigate with them. The plus for the Lonely Planet guide was that they had some of the street names on the maps in Chinese characters, but oddly not all of them. The Rough Guides book has characters for restaurants, lodging, sites, and other important things but not the street names on the map. But the maps are much easier to read and where they do have characters they’re in a larger, clearer font than in the Lonely Planet guide, so they would be easier to point out to someone in order to communicate. We also bought: a Chinese Phrasebook and dictionary, “China Survival Guide: how to avoid travel troubles and mortifying mishaps,” “The Eater’s Guide to Chinese Characters,” and a basic Chinese characters for travelers book which will hopefully come in the mail today since the book store in Berkeley we had holding it for us didn’t actually hold it for us! Already we’ve learned the symbols for rice, noodles, chicken, pork, stir-fry and a few others from the food book. I’m glad we got this one since we love food and being able to order confidently and not be afraid of getting served dog will be fantastic. We also bought two non-fiction books about Chinese history. One is actually banned in China, so we’re going to have to cover it somehow (it’s called “Wild Swans” by Jung Chang). And the other book is by an American who lived in China and it’s called “Oracle Bones” and is by Peter Hessler. So we’re loaded up on reading material and helpful guides and hopefully it’ll all help make China a more enjoyable experience.

While I’m glad we went to South America, in the end it wasn’t my favorite place. I think if we would’ve spent less time over all and more time in Ecuador instead of Peru I would have enjoyed it more. I’ve been trying to figure out why I didn’t like Peru, and I think some of it was concrete reasons and some of it was just a gut feeling.  Here are some things I didn’t like:

• There are taxis everywhere and they all beep at foreigners and yell “Taxi, taxi, taxi!” At first it was sort of funny, but after a while it just really got to me. It’s not very enjoyable to be walking around either to a tourist place or just to the grocery store and constantly being yelled and beeped at.
• The food was not that good. Every meal would consist of potatoes AND rice (and sometimes plantains, too!) and then some sort of fried or gravy-ed meat. Sometimes you’d get a fried egg thrown on top which would add a little variety, but I need veggies and flavor. There’s a reason you don’t see very many Peruvian restaurants around.
• Long distance buses, our mode of transportation, were a pain in the butt. Usually the different bus companies were spread around town so you had to take a taxi or walk around to compare prices. The prices were always vastly different and sometimes it reflected in the quality and swiftness of the bus and sometimes it didn’t, so you never knew what you were getting. It was very stressful.
• There were lots of people on the street trying to sell us stuff. Whether it was very whiney little kids with their chichlet gum “Senior, por favor!” or women with cell phones yelling “llamada, llamada, llamada!” Steve does a great impression of them both, which unfortunately can’t be reproduced in writing.

Some of these things were in Ecuador as well, but all combined together in Peru just made things worse. I would definitely recommend anyone and everyone to visit Ecuador as it’s easy to get around, cheap, and absolutely beautiful. Every bus ride (during the day) was filled with gorgeous scenery and it all changes so quickly from coast to mountains to rainforest. It was awesome seeing all the different ecosystems.

I was going to write more about just random things we saw and thought about while traveling in South America but never wrote about, but my mind is all filled with excitement for China and nerves about graduate school applications and I just can’t think about it right now. I’m still working on uploading photos and I should have those all up before we leave for China, which is in two days… crazy!

Gina. Vilcabamba, Ecuador.

Our spa day yesterday might have been the best $50 and 3 hours I´ve ever spent! We went to Madre Tierra (Mother Earth) spa in Vilcabamba, Ecuador where we had three hours of pampering. It almost satisfied all 5 senses–everything except for taste which we remedied after by getting cake and a cookie at a little cafe (with strawberry juice for me and a beer for Steve).

The experience started with us getting a yummy lunch of sandwiches and some kind of fresh flower tea at the spa/hostel´s restaurant. Then we went up to the spa where we stripped and put on fluffy robes. Our first indulgence was a scalp treatment where they rubbed a white slimey substance (I think it might have had egg white in it) into our hair and scalps. It was like a mini head massage. Then our heads were wrapped in hot towels and funny blue shower caps. Next was what was going to be the first step in our facials. We had mud rubbed on our faces and then carrots for our eyes! I didn´t get to take any photos of Steve since I was blinded by my carrots but it felt wonderful and strange as the mud dried and got hard on our faces. When our motherly spa lady wiped off the mud she then rubbed a honey exfoliating mask on our faces which smelled and felt fantastic.

After our facials and hair treatments we got into the steam boxes which ended up being both of our favorite part. They were hot boxes where you sat on a stool and only our heads stuck out. It was very hot and very relaxing. We got out three times to get wiped down with cold towels, then sit in a cold tub, then sprayed with cold water. By the final sit in the box I was so relaxed that I was slumped over with the box´lid supporting my head and keeping me from falling over! It felt amazing!

After the hot boxes we got rubbed down with a salt exfoliator which I didn´t really like since my skin is a little sensitive and the sat hurt a bit. But afterwards I felt very soft, so I guess it was worth it. Then we got covered in mud in a mud bath! It was really fun to get covered in all kinds of mud and goo and all different textures. Then showers to get off the mud and the goop from our hair. Then another facial treatment. This one smelled so good I wanted to lick my face! It smelled a little like oatmeal cookie dough, which maybe it was! Then foot massages and our three hours of pampering was over.

It was a lot more fun and relaxing than I ever could have dreamed it would be. Now we´re bother spoiled and want to do it all of the time! It would only have been better if we would have gotten a full body massage as well, but then I don´t think we would´ve been able to leave!

But it was wonderful and I´d highly recommend it or something similar to anyone and everyone!

Funny spa day photos:

Gina with yummy smelling goop on her face.

Steam box heads.

Completely relaxed after our spa day.