The breakfast this morning was mostly the same as yesterday. This time I mostly stuck to fried rice, eggs, watermelon, and more wonderful coffee from the latte machine.
We met Ricky, who will be our guide again today, in the lobby and checked out of the hotel. I exchanged some of my larger yuan bills into smaller ones to make bargaining easier. Then we got on the road for the day.
Our first stop was supposed to be the Summer Palace, but we ended up getting stuck in some traffic and going to the Olympic park first.
On the way to the park, we stopped by a store. I found a sweatshirt that I wanted to get, but after I bought it I wasn't sure how I was going to carry it around all day. The shop keeper told me to just wear all of my jackets. I just kind of shrugged along and walked out. I thought it would be way too warm, but turns out I was pretty comfortable after adding the fourth later. Let's just say it was a pretty cold day.
On the way to the park, we stopped by a store. I found a sweatshirt that I wanted to get, but after I bought it I wasn't sure how I was going to carry it around all day. The shop keeper told me to just wear all of my jackets. I just kind of shrugged along and walked out. I thought it would be way too warm, but turns out I was pretty comfortable after adding the fourth later. Let's just say it was a pretty cold day.
The buildings from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing are quite well maintained and still in use today. The Ice Cube aquatic center had some sort of Volvo event going on in a tent outside, and there were many very nice, expensive cars driving around. There was also a Christmas tree set up outside of the Birds Nest. The park has many statues all over, but my favorite was of some women dressed in the Olympic colors, running and carrying tourches. Ricky says it's symbolic of the fact that girls can do sports and succeed just as well as men, and that the Chinese government really wanted to show thay they support women athletes since there's a bit of a gender gap in society.
I also want to give a little shout out to olBeijing Huan Ying Ni's constant playing throughout the Olympic Park. Definitely a reminder of my days in high school Chinese class.
The best building, though, definitely had to be the IT support building. Alexia and I had a definite nerd moment as we both decided it looked like a semiconductor device. Ricky then told us it was for IT support during the games, and that it was designed to look like a computer chip. Unfortunately, we were too enamoured with the building to take proper photos. We tried while we were in the van leaving, but that only works so well 😂
By then we were all pretty hungry, so Ricky took us to get lunch at a traditional restaurant. The food was delicious, and the restaurant was very cute. In the evening, there is a show to watch while you eat, and although there aren't any at lunch time, I felt like we were an additional attraction for other restaurant patrons to see. It doesn't really bother me, although I do wish that some of them would wave and smile instead of just staring so abruptly.
As an added bonus, Lil Mao found the perfect cover photo for his mix tape 😊
After lunch, we went to the Summer Palace. It was originally built by one of the emperors for his mother, but he later decided it was so nice that he would also stay there during the summer.
It has a huge man-made lake to help keep it cool and a giant covered walkway to prevent a situation where the emperor's mother would have to walk out in the sunshine or the rain. The inside of the ceiling was decorated and painted beautifully so that she had something nice to look at since the sky was blocked.
I really enjoyed hearing about the emporer's mother's life. She got 128 course meals! But 128 is too many dishes to eat, so she would have some for looking at, some for smelling, and then some for eating. I feel like that's very wasteful, but I imagine that as the emperor's mother, she was well treated. Ricky was also telling us that the Unix had to taste test all of her meals because she was sometimes a little bit naughty, and some people would try to poison her.
Overall, the Summer Palace was so beautiful. I appreciated it much more than the Forbidden City. I think the scenic views are breathtaking, and I would love to come back in the summertime to see the full beauty of the Palace.
The Summer Palace was the last destination in Beijing we had time to see, so after that our driver took us to the airport for our flight to Chongqing. Flying domestically in China is an interesting experience.
Security is so different, for starters. They don't have the full body scanners and you don't have to take off your shoes, coat, or jewelry before going through the metal detectors. Instead, basically everyone sets off the detector and then the security agents wand you for further screening. I was wearing boots with zippers, my glasses, and a necklace, so I set off the security wand three times and got held up for a pretty thorough pat down. Then I ran into trouble with my suitcase because I didn't realize I had to remove external battery packs before sending my bag through the scanner. They had to search it, have me pull out the battery pack, and then rescan everything. Thankfully there was no major issue, just a miscommunication.
We had a while before our flight took off, so we went adventuring to find some Chapstick. I was feeling much more adventurous with my Mandarin skills, so I tried asking the shop workers if they have any Chapstick. It was going pretty well, and eventually we even found a convenience store that sold it!
Then Liz and I (as usual) went off to find a bathroom. Once again, I was able to practice my language skills a bit. I have to keep reminding myself that even if it's not perfect, I should at least give it a try. For the most part, I've actually been having more success with my scraps of Mandarin knowledge than we have with trying English. I'm still amazed that people can understand any Mandarin that I speak, and I think maybe by the end of our trip I'll have remembered a lot of basic survival Mandarin I used to know. It makes me feel a lot better having at least some basic language skills again, and makes me wish I had time to study a foreign language again at school.
On the airplane, it was a bit of a rough journey. I didn't realize that security on board was so strict. Cell phones had to be turned off the entire flight, even if they had airplane mode. I thought maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal and that I could still use it discretely, but they also announced the presence of the in-flight security team who could detain people who break the rules, so I opted out of the attempt.
I think I ended up sleeping most of the flight, although we did get a copy of the Chinese newspaper and did our best to read/interpret the news stories. We also got a meal on the flight. Beef or chicken. I decided on beef tonight, and am still kind of wondering where the beef actually was. Maybe it got lost on the way, because I think only 5 pieces of beef actually made it, and those pieces were about the size of a grain of rice each. The rice was pretty good, especially for airplane food, so I probably shouldn't complain too much. It also came with a nice peach yogurt.
Once we landed in Chongqing, we got off the plane and had to take a bus up to the terminal. Alexia lost her balance when the bus turned and went flying into the unsuspecting people in front of her. Their faces were so shocked; it was fairly humorous to observe. I was going to catch her, but she was going to wrong way 😞
Lotus and Dr. Brown met us at the airport and took us back to the hotel. Lotus made us a super awesome welcome sign! She was so organized and gave us each a copy of our schedule right when we arrived.
Once we got checked in, there wasn't much else to do so we went exploring the hotel. These rooms have doorbells, which we all decided would be a horrible idea in the US. People must be more respectful here, or maybe it was just a nicer hotel.
The other big discovery was of a -1 floor of the hotel. It was really strange and kind if a little creepy. There was some sort of rundown cafeteria, some storage space, and am Egyptian wall carving. Lil Mao also managed to find a mouse trap, but it hadn't caught a mouse yet.
The gym was closed, and the pool was under construction. The only other noteworthy thing we found was a guy waxing the floors. He was so confused about why we were walking around... I'm pretty sure he called a desk attendant to come check on us, but she just asked us what we were doing and we said we were walking around and she left.
We rode the elevators with a lot of different people, and again I noticed they were staring a lot. I would say that here the staring is more apparent and more common/frequent. That's probably because I don't think Chongqing is a huge tourist destination, so they are just less used to seeing foreigners. Like I said before, it's all good fun but I just wonder why they don't smile or something.
Tomorrow morning isn't too early of a morning, but we'll have a busy day with Lotus and her classmates, so it's off to bed!
I also want to give a little shout out to olBeijing Huan Ying Ni's constant playing throughout the Olympic Park. Definitely a reminder of my days in high school Chinese class.
As an added bonus, Lil Mao found the perfect cover photo for his mix tape 😊
After lunch, we went to the Summer Palace. It was originally built by one of the emperors for his mother, but he later decided it was so nice that he would also stay there during the summer.
It has a huge man-made lake to help keep it cool and a giant covered walkway to prevent a situation where the emperor's mother would have to walk out in the sunshine or the rain. The inside of the ceiling was decorated and painted beautifully so that she had something nice to look at since the sky was blocked.
Overall, the Summer Palace was so beautiful. I appreciated it much more than the Forbidden City. I think the scenic views are breathtaking, and I would love to come back in the summertime to see the full beauty of the Palace.
The Summer Palace was the last destination in Beijing we had time to see, so after that our driver took us to the airport for our flight to Chongqing. Flying domestically in China is an interesting experience.
Security is so different, for starters. They don't have the full body scanners and you don't have to take off your shoes, coat, or jewelry before going through the metal detectors. Instead, basically everyone sets off the detector and then the security agents wand you for further screening. I was wearing boots with zippers, my glasses, and a necklace, so I set off the security wand three times and got held up for a pretty thorough pat down. Then I ran into trouble with my suitcase because I didn't realize I had to remove external battery packs before sending my bag through the scanner. They had to search it, have me pull out the battery pack, and then rescan everything. Thankfully there was no major issue, just a miscommunication.
We had a while before our flight took off, so we went adventuring to find some Chapstick. I was feeling much more adventurous with my Mandarin skills, so I tried asking the shop workers if they have any Chapstick. It was going pretty well, and eventually we even found a convenience store that sold it!
Then Liz and I (as usual) went off to find a bathroom. Once again, I was able to practice my language skills a bit. I have to keep reminding myself that even if it's not perfect, I should at least give it a try. For the most part, I've actually been having more success with my scraps of Mandarin knowledge than we have with trying English. I'm still amazed that people can understand any Mandarin that I speak, and I think maybe by the end of our trip I'll have remembered a lot of basic survival Mandarin I used to know. It makes me feel a lot better having at least some basic language skills again, and makes me wish I had time to study a foreign language again at school.
On the airplane, it was a bit of a rough journey. I didn't realize that security on board was so strict. Cell phones had to be turned off the entire flight, even if they had airplane mode. I thought maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal and that I could still use it discretely, but they also announced the presence of the in-flight security team who could detain people who break the rules, so I opted out of the attempt.
I think I ended up sleeping most of the flight, although we did get a copy of the Chinese newspaper and did our best to read/interpret the news stories. We also got a meal on the flight. Beef or chicken. I decided on beef tonight, and am still kind of wondering where the beef actually was. Maybe it got lost on the way, because I think only 5 pieces of beef actually made it, and those pieces were about the size of a grain of rice each. The rice was pretty good, especially for airplane food, so I probably shouldn't complain too much. It also came with a nice peach yogurt.
Once we landed in Chongqing, we got off the plane and had to take a bus up to the terminal. Alexia lost her balance when the bus turned and went flying into the unsuspecting people in front of her. Their faces were so shocked; it was fairly humorous to observe. I was going to catch her, but she was going to wrong way 😞
Lotus and Dr. Brown met us at the airport and took us back to the hotel. Lotus made us a super awesome welcome sign! She was so organized and gave us each a copy of our schedule right when we arrived.
Once we got checked in, there wasn't much else to do so we went exploring the hotel. These rooms have doorbells, which we all decided would be a horrible idea in the US. People must be more respectful here, or maybe it was just a nicer hotel.
The other big discovery was of a -1 floor of the hotel. It was really strange and kind if a little creepy. There was some sort of rundown cafeteria, some storage space, and am Egyptian wall carving. Lil Mao also managed to find a mouse trap, but it hadn't caught a mouse yet.
The gym was closed, and the pool was under construction. The only other noteworthy thing we found was a guy waxing the floors. He was so confused about why we were walking around... I'm pretty sure he called a desk attendant to come check on us, but she just asked us what we were doing and we said we were walking around and she left.
We rode the elevators with a lot of different people, and again I noticed they were staring a lot. I would say that here the staring is more apparent and more common/frequent. That's probably because I don't think Chongqing is a huge tourist destination, so they are just less used to seeing foreigners. Like I said before, it's all good fun but I just wonder why they don't smile or something.
Tomorrow morning isn't too early of a morning, but we'll have a busy day with Lotus and her classmates, so it's off to bed!
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