Yesterday was probably one of the longest days I've ever had. After writing up that last post on my iPhone while sitting in the Beijing Airport Starbucks quite a lot happened. Between flight delays for the other students and minor issues at the airport, Terri and I actually ended up sitting at that Starbucks for 6 hours. Now I love Starbucks and all, a total junkie, but 6 hours in the same seat without Internet access was close to torture. Thankfully about 2 hours into our 6 hour wait the student ambassadors from Nankai University with their resident director Ming which provided a fair amount of entertainment. They were, they are, all so nice and spoke English fairly well. It was a welcome relief to have someone nearby who spoke English. I spent most of my time talking to one of the ambassador students, John, and then a student from Stetson, Ashley. We talked about everything from Michael Jackson (yup, MJ is still big here) to families, school, the types of law their all studying, things we do for fun, etc. etc. It was fun. The one thing that made me laugh though was how interested they were in my "gold" hair. Several of them asked me if I was born with such shinny golden hair, it was cute.
By 11pm local time everyone had arrived and we made our way to the charter bus that was going to bring us down to Tianjin. It was probably about a 2 1/2 hour drive and as nice as it was for the bus to have AC, that was probably the only nice thing about it. I could swear that bus didn't have shocks since we felt every bump, crack and rock on the path. The seats weren't that comfortable either, but hey, it was a free ride. We finally got to our hotel around 1am and after checking in made it up to our room. All of the students are staying on the same floor and can you believe it's floor 13? I don't think I've ever stayed in a hotel that had a 13th floor. Our room is nice and perfect for our 5 day stay here, but I'm not sure how the students who are here for the whole month are going to do it. Props to them. So after a quick Skype session with my brother and niece at home, Terri and I, exhausted, turned in for the night. Unfortunately for us the beds are rock solid. I mean I like a firm mattress and all, but I might as well be sleeping on the floor. But again, it's a bed so I shouldn't complain.
We both woke up around 8-830am, showered and went downstairs for breakfast. It's going to take some getting used to, seeing noodles and other foods I would normally associate with lunch or dinner at a breakfast buffet. There were some potato cakes, sausage, bacon and fruit options so all wasn't totally lost. There were even rice crispies which I was totally stoked about until I saw that the milk had been sitting out and so I decided to avoid that. No need to get sick this early into the trip. So I had noodles, potatoes, bacon and a bun for breakfast with some Chinese tea. And my Asian family would be proud of me, I ate the whole meal with chop sticks. :) All that practice has helped. We'll see how I do at our next meal though...
After breakfast we did another quick Skype session with home and then packed up to go exploring. Since it's Sunday here we were told the best place to go would be the Tianjin Ancient Culture Street, an outdoor market type shopping center that reminded me very much of the many Chinatowns I've visited, probably most like San Fransisco though. Terri and I took a taxi (that was interesting, the way they drive around here is scary!) walked around a bit and scoped out everything. Then we went back and did a second pass to buy some things. We did a little bit of negotiating on prices and for the most part got the few things we purchased for what we think is a good deal. The most important part is that we had fun doing it right? And we got by without having to use any of our many translators we both have on our iPhones. We spent a couple hours out and then caught a cab back to the hotel. I just want to say, for the record, that I should NEVER complain about Chicago traffic. People here do NOT know how to drive. There are no such things as lanes, crosswalks, red lights, yielding to oncoming or pedestrian traffic, nothing. I mean there probably should be, there might even be some laws in place, but no one follows them. I would never survive if I had to drive here. In fact I'm surprised we survived the 2 cab rides.
Now we're back in the hotel, eating some snacks, drinking some Coke Zero (that tastes different) and watching the 1 English tv channel we seem to get, Star Movies. HA! The programming seems to be all bad American movies. Right now some horrible J-Lo/Marc Anthony salsa movie is on. *sigh* If I wasn't so worn out, or it wasn't so hot out, we'd probably explore a little more. But it's nice to sit here and relax. Probably the last day I'll really get to do it, so with that I'm going to wrap this up, post and lay down for a little while.
Until next time...
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Again since blogger is being blocked as part of the great firewall of China, I'm posting this via email. Please forgive all formatting issues. Below should be my photos for this post. Here are some captions that you'll have to do your best matching up with the photos they belong to. Since I can't even see blogger someone let me know if this isn't working.
These are only a few of all I've taken so far. Hopefully you'll enjoy them since I have SO many others to share:
1- Our hotel, with our little traveler Pandy. Pandy is Amy's panda that is traveling with Terri and I for the week. We've been taking pictures of Pandy doing everything we do to share with the little bugger at home.
2- The gate to Ancient Culture Street.
3- Ancient Culture Street.
4- A little Asian girl poses for her family to take a photo in front of a store's statue on the street.
5- A very happy dragon that was guarding a part of the street.
6- There were painters all up and down the street offering to paint your name. This man was so nice that we him paint one for Amy. He drew a crowd, it was so cool to watch.
7- The painter and the finished product.
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