Change of Plans

Saturday, January 9, 2010

10:23 PM – BEIJING

Yes, Beijing!  Some of my more astute readers may observe that Beijing is not the city I should be updating from at this point in our venture. And, yes, they should be correct had not plans change by the minute on this tour.   As Leah and I were eating breakfast yesterday morning we received a text from William and Borja saying that our schools for Saturday and Sunday were going to be cancelled due to a blizzard rolling through the Anshan province. 'What luck!' We both thought as we had been fretting over the amount of material that needed to be changed and the lack of time necessary to make those changes. 'Now we have time to work!'

And then we hit up the Lonely Planet book to figure out what we could do for the day. Did we want to do the Great Wall? What about the Forbidden City? How about trying to find a market? Let's do ALL of that.  Oh, and now that we don't have to work tomorrow, let's go clubbing tonight!  Yes!

We ended up staying in the hostel and catching up on e-mails and such until Borja came and took us to the Temple of Heaven. We spent most of the day walking around in the freezing cold watching the older Chinese men playing cards while the women danced. We watched the old mix with the young in games of hacky sack. We caught up on each others' lives and spoke to each other through opposite ends of long walls.  We froze our butts off and warmed them up in a pearl market where I haggled my first piece of merchandise (a replica Breitling Navigator watch) down from 1000 RMB (Yuan) to 250 RMB (roughly 36 USD).

After deciding I still probably spent too much for it, we went to eat, where we trusted Borja to get us something edible. After a bowl of noodles bigger than our heads and some red-sauced eggplant meal we went back to the market where I picked up a couple of iPod covers (including a Michael Jackson one!) for pretty cheap.  Relative to the US price that is.

After a long day of dancing with older ladies, yelling down walls, and pushing for bargains, we decided that work could wait and that we wanted to go out after a quick nap. So Leah and I got back to our hostel around 6:00pm, set our alarms for 9:00, and put our heads on the pillow.

9:00 Came and went. So did ten. And so on until 1:30 AM when we got a little bit of wind to us and decided to text Borja to find out if any places were still open.  Borja was passed out, too.  Well, I'm fine with sleeping a little more, how about you, Leah? Yup…

Next thing I know is its 6:00am.

I headed down to the "recreation room" (which is just a TV room) where I sat and watched a funny little white guy on the piano and figured out how to upload pictures.  Finally, I was interrupted by a self-proclaimed former Navy Seal from Texas named Wiley who was on the run from the US government. His stories we consistently intriguing, graphic, and for all I know 100% true, but I felt compelled to leave him in order to wait for Leah to wake up. Fortunately, she woke when I entered the room and I greeted her with some of the one-liners I had just heard that would not be gentlemanly of me to reprint here.  Suffice it to say, Wiley did manage to give me some advice on Chinese women.

From then on, Leah and I spent our ENTIRE DAY working on our presentation. We arrived at Bookworms (our fake office) before 9:30am and didn't leave until 6:00 when William picked us up to take us to the printer and then out to dinner where we feasted in a very nice restaurant. Duck, chicken, potatoes, tofu, soup, eggplant, mushrooms, and a handful of other dishes I had no idea what was in them filled the entire table around us.

We ate our fill

And drank some beer

Caught up with Will

And had some cheer!

 

Now the night has come, and the new day brings new travel.  We will still be going to the Anshan province – this time we should be a go. I hate to admit but despite the 12 hours of sleep I had last night, I still feel like I'm a goner as soon as I lay down. And that's exactly what I plan now to do!  I hope you enjoy the pictures and Thank you to Mrs. Schrage's class – we will be working on answering all of your questions as soon as we can!

 

Yao Ming,

Steve