Forbidden City, etc.

So yesterday was our field trip to Tian'anmen and the Forbidden City. The weather was all kinds of cold and wet and gross, and my camera battery died after like 4 pictures, so I think I'll have to go back sometime when it's nicer. It was really pretty and very well-kept-up, but there's not much to tell really. I learned that the emperor had thousands of concubines and we wondered how exactly he managed with that, and I learned that they had huge huge vessels all over that were supposed to hold water for putting out fires and the ones in the inner section were covered with gold but the Japanese scraped it a lot of it off during the war, and I learned that seeing the Forbidden City is not as nice when it's cold and grey and raining out. Bu hao!

After the tour we decided to find lunch instead of taking the CIEE bus back to Beida, so we took a bus to Xidan and ate in the food court of a shopping center, and when I was trying to get out of my seat to go to the bathroom, I put my hand down on the edge of my tray and it shot my food up, catapult-style, and I got soup on my pants and the floor and Pei's backpack (fortunately it was thick soup so it wasn't too messy), and my baozi landed on the floor and got all dirty, which made me very very sad because baozi (steamed buns with various fillings, for you Westerners) are one of my favoritest things to eat here, or probably anywhere. Oh well, I'm sure there will be lots more baozi in my future. Hen hao!

The shopping center we were in was riDICulously large...it had like 8 floors, and I only got as far as like the 5th, but the best part of it was that the first floor where we came in was like Candyland! There were soooo many kinds of sweets and it was all colorful and I was like a small child I was so happy. Jackie and I spent a really long time trying to read labels and guess based on the pictures and eventually I got a couple random preserved fruit things that I didn't really know what they were but they've been tasty so far, albeit rather sticky and messy.

After I got shiny shiny candy, me and Jackie and Steve wanted to go home but everyone else was still shopping, so we ventured out on a mission to figure out the subway system! We went around and asked random people where the "ditie" was until we found it, and then we wandered around reading signs and asking questions until we figured out getting tickets and which direction we should be going and which stops we needed to transfer at and whatnot and we totally didn't mess up or get lost at all! One of the transfers was really silly because there was construction and we had to go up a bunch of stairs and walk around in a big circle outside and go across a street and crazy places and then back underground to get on the next line, and then they made us get another ticket. Bu hao. But then we were waiting in line (people make little lines so when the train comes they are all neatly in line at the doors, which is funny now that I think about it because the Chinese are not all about waiting in line politely) and speaking English with random snippets of Chinese, and the dude in front of us turned around and asked if we were American and we ended up making friends with him and his name was Sebastian and he was from Mozambique and spoke like 5 languages and was studying Chinese at Yuyan Daxue and had just bought canvases to finish a collection he was painting of modern art based on traditional African life, and he invited us to come to the opening of his art exhibition so we gave him our email addresses and it was AWESOME. And then we got off at the right stop and walked back to campus and didn't get lost and were so proud. It was way gross weather, but it was a sweet sweet time. Feichang hao!

Last night was another night where I stayed in and went to bed early...the weather was still yucky, so we just ordered takeout from Manfu (delivery is FREE here because they don't tip in this country and ahh China is so deliciously cheap), and after that I pretty much crashed and went to bed. I slept like 11 hours, it was ridiculous. Today I didn't do much, just bummed around in the morning...the most productive thing I did was take my clothes to the laundry. I brought like NO clothes with me to China. Hen hao! Then we went to lunch on campus...getting food on campus is a little bit amazing because it's like 3 or 4 yuan for your food, which is approximately 50 cents. If you get a drink it frequently costs as much as or more than your food...I'm thinking I should get a water bottle and fill it from the huge things of water I have in my room so I won't always be having juice or sweet drinks with my meals. And so I can be even more cheapo, because $1 for a meal is just too much...mahaha hen hao!

This afternoon I took another stab at the application for the summer volunteer program in Africa that I'm thinking about...it was kind of demoralizing because I kept feeling like I have no qualifications. Like, I'm all about doing nice helping-type things for people, but I couldn't really think of any volunteer work in particular to write about, I've just done little things here and there. And I feel like I don't have any skills...I know lots about linguistics and I feel like I'm a generally useful person to have around, but I can't really name any specific areas of expertise that would be relevant. I don't know. But I would be good at doing humanitarian work! I promise! Whatevs. And also I was having a hard time contacting my tutor and I tried to read my textbooks a little bit and got a little frustrated and I sort of retreated into my bed and just curled up in a lump for a while. But then my roomie came back from shopping and chatted with me and other people came back and I got less lumpish and more normal and non-antisocial. Hen hao! And we ordered food again because it's cold out and we are hen lazy and delivery is free. Oh also today I got more silly foods, including cucumber flavor potato chips and green tea pocky, which are weird because they are made with milk and Chinese dairy products taste very...different. I got jam and what I thought were plain sliced rolls to spread it on for breakfast, but actually the rolls have some unknown orange stuff inside them, so we'll see how that goes. I'm all about the food adventures.

My language tutor finally called me back tonight! Her name is Joy and I get to meet her on Tuesday and I can just tell that she is going to be adorable. Hen hao! Oh and I called MIF this afternoon talked to lots of people and I miss everybody but it was funny because it was like 3 am there so everybody was a little sleepy. It was cute. Everybody should send me emails or something, I'd be happy to hear from you! You can IM me at silly times too, because they'll be normal times in Beijing...I'm 13 hours ahead of the US East Coast.

Time to take another stab at productivity...what what