Mike In China

Sorry for the delay in the posting. We went to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City the next day. It is INSANE how big the Forbidden City is. We started at the south entrance and would walk through a gate and there would be a huge, beautiful building that we would take pictures of and then we would walk through a little gate on the side and then there would be another even bigger one, and then we would take pictures of that and walk through the little gate on the side, and then there would be another one! It just kept going and going and going. It was really cool though. I will now educate you on a common scam to get you to buy things. If I have already told you, then skip this part. Two college age Chinese people will come up and start a conversation with you in English, ask you were you are from, through in some compliments. After a nice conversation and you thinking, wow, Chinese people are nice, they inform you that they are art students from a local University. You think, wow, that's cool. Then they ask you to come see their exhibit, NO. They are not real art students, it is not a real art exhibit, it is all the same junk you find in all the same stores, they just want you to come shop in theirs. Now back to the trip. The next day we had a private driver take us to the Great Wall. I fell asleep the whole ride there and back and Barone told me the ride was absolutely horrific. On top of already crazing driving in China, apparently our driver was insane running tractors off the road and passing semis on curves of hilly, curvy, two lane roads. Too make things worse, I guess our driver was falling asleep the whole drive back. Good thing I was sleeping too! The Great Wall was amazing though. Because we went to the furthest of the three spots to climb the wall and the fact that it was freezing in the winter we had the Wall to ourselves. Well, that is except for the Chinese man and woman that followed us around for the entire two hour hike being nice and telling us information just so that we would buy something from them at the end. I wasn't going to give in, but they had a really cool t-shirt I wanted and I caved. I apologize to all white travelers visiting the Great Wall for perpetuating the stereotype that white people will buy anything you put in front of them. DOH?! Barone was mentally exhausted from the car ride so that was all we did that day. For our last day in Beijing we had lunch again at the hot pot restaurant and then checked out the Temple of Heaven before packing our bags and jumping on the train back to Shanghai. Luckily, for this train ride we had a soft sleeper room so we had plenty of room to sit, talk and sleep comfortably. Our time in Shanghai was a lot more laid back. I still had some teaching and grading to finish up and Barone came with me to my classes to see me teach. We did most of the touristy things in Shanghai although there are not as many because Shanghai is more of a modern city than Beijing is. One day we went to the Science and Technology Museum which was pretty cool. I hope the museum is still under construction because it was enormous but had very few exhibits. The ones that where there though we very cool. However, I did feel like I was just reading out of a sixth grade science book. As in, I feel like I should be learning something when going to a museum but all the information was very basic stuff that everyone learns early on in middle school. I think China has a pretty good education system too so I was confused as to why everything seemed so dumbed down. Perhaps something was lost in the English translations to the exhibits. I would say the highlight of our time in Shanghai however was the night we went to the sushi restaurant. I took Barone to the all you can eat sushi restaurant because she said she really likes sushi. We got there and the place was packed so they ended up seating us at some tiny table in the back room. We realized that we were actually in a private room and that the 30 other people in the room were all a private party! They were all business men and women from a Chinese paper company that were having an office party. They were clearly not there for the sushi and were only there to get very drunk and were playing drinking games and such. Of course we had to watch and after awhile they had us join in! The people were very nice and we had a ton of fun. They even ended up paying for our dinner and drinks all night! I think it was also good for Barone to spend some time with local Chinese people. It was a blast, we got really ridiculously wasted and Barone actually ended up puking during the cab ride home. I was super excited because she started not feeling well and told me she was going to throw up and then I summonned my inner Chinese language master and remembered the word for vomit and started yelling it at the cab driver until he gave me a bag for her to puke in. "OUTU! OUTU!" My foreign language skill definitely improves after I've been drinking. Then Barone left and now my mom is here. Today was our first day and we went to Old Town, then Walked to the French Concession. After that we came home and then went to dinner at a steak house that had an awesome view of the Bund from across the river. Then we went up the Pearl TV Tower and now we are home resting up for tomorrow. So far, she hasn't driven me crazy yet, let's hope things stay this way! I will hopefully have the time to update again before we head down to Yunnan. Make sure you keep checking my picture site also because I am putting up pictures that go along with all the stories I tell on my blog!

On Thursday night I finished work and took a cab out to the Pudong airport, picked up Barone and we hopped on the train to Beijing. The train ride was interesting. I was only able to get us tickets in a "hard sleeper" and on the top bunk of three high bunk beds. Climbing up with our bags was a little difficult and once we got up there we couldn't sit up but it wasn't too bad. Because it was late (and Barone had been traveling for almost 24 hours) we just talked for awhile and slept the rest of the train ride. Barone and I arrived, took a taxi to Nathan's apartment and let ourselves in. We hunted down a spot for lunch while waiting for Nathan to get off of work. We stumbled upon a local "hot pot" restaurant. At a hot pot restuarant they give you a pot of boiling water with spices and herbs and then you order plates of uncooked meat and vegetables. It tastes really good and is also alot of fun. After lunch Nathan met up with us and we took Barone to her first Chinese market. She was a little overwhelmed at first but was able to pull herself together and purchase a scarf. For dinner we went to a restaurant and had some of the famous Peking Duck. It was really good. After dinner we stopped by a couple local bars for drinks before heading to Party World with a group of Nathan's friends. Party World is a giant KTV Bar (karaoke bare). We had a blast! Its crazy how seriously they take their kareoke bars here. The next morning we woke up and headed to the Arts District. Its an old warehouse/industrial area that has been converted into tons of different contemporary art galleries. It was a really cool area. Then we headed to Hohai which is an area surrounding a lake that is mostly a Hutong area (tradional style Chinese buildings). It was fun just walking around looking at the different shops. Out on the ice the people were flying kites and ice skating. It was funny though because they weren't all on skates but rather they mostly used little sleds that had to seats on long blades that they pushed themselves around with ski poles. They looked pretty fun. It was pretty cold so instead of walking around we decided to stop and get foot message at a local shop. It was ok but it tickled alot. After that we met up with some more of Nathan's friends and had dinner at an Indian restaurant. The food was really good. One of Nathan's friends was a Chinese woman who owned a bar nearby so we went there to hangout and have a few drinks for awhile. We had fun playing Jenga and the tradional Chinese drinking dice game. After that we headed to a club, MIX. We had fun dancing until about 2am but then headed out because Nathan had to run into work to finish a project in the morning. Today we woke up and went to the Lama Temple and saw the giant Budda. Then we got lunch at a local, hole in the wall restaurant for lunch and then got another massage. We got free dinner with the massages and then headed to the night market where Nathan and I ate scorpion on a stick. It wasn't too bad. Its time to head to bed because tomorrow we are going to go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Don't worry I've already taken over 100 pictures and will post them when I get back to Shanghai.

I apologize for not writing for awhile and I actually have been not the least bit busy lately. But, in case you haven't heard there was a big earthquake in Taiwan and apparently it messed up some Internet cables that connect China to the Internet back in America. So basically, its been impossible to get to most websites and those that I could get to would take forever to load and I just decided to wait to update my blog until they fixed things. Things still aren't perfect but I'm able to get to most websites now, things are just a little slow (so I won't attempt uploading pictures for a little while still). The holidays here went well. I spent Christmas Eve having an all day Prison Break marathon. Its a pretty good show so I'm glad I watched it. My mom called and freaked out because I was spending Christmas Eve alone. I'm pretty sure she immediately called my dad because minutes after I got off the phone with her Dad, Lisa and Grandma called. It was actually kind of funny because they were concerned that I'm watching my money too carefully and that I should be doing something fun for the holidays. Can you believe that?! My dad telling me I'm not spending enough money! I will remember that day forever... Christmas day was also a lot of fun. One of my fellow teachers had a bunch of us over and they all cooked a traditional western Christmas dinner. The food was really good and it was great to eat western food. I was not on cooking patrol but was instead on "beverage duty" with a couple others and our job was making sure the beverages got drank. It was a very fun afternoon and evening even though things ended up getting a little crazy for the beverage patrol. The worst part was that after drinking all afternoon we had the great idea to start a century club at 10pm. I ended up being that wasted guy in a Santa hat. The security gaurd of my building litterally had to walk me up to my door and now everytime I see him he laughs at me, says something in Chinese and makes a drinking gesture with his hands. Just great. Work is winding down for break so it has been testing and grading season. I have a new found appreciation for teachers and grading. It has taken me forever to grade simple little circle the correct answer tests. I can't even imaging grading hundreds of 15 page papers like professors do?! New Years Eve was also a blast. The same group of us got together and paid for a table at one of the best hip hop clubs in Shanghai. The club had a big New Year's Eve party going on and there were a ton of people there. Having a table was nice because it was a good "home base" to have away from the craziness of the dance floor. At midnight they had Las Vegas style scantily clad go-go dancers on the speakers, did the whole countdown and then they had fake snow fall for awhile so that was really cool. In general it was just a really fun night with friends, great way to bring in the new year. I didn't get too wasted but after the club I did hop in a cab by myself and demanded that the cab driver find a 24 hour McDonalds. This consisted of me continually yelling MAIDONGLAO at him as he would yell things back at me in Chinese and point to his watch trying to say it was too late (it was only like 3:30am). After driving all over Shanghai we finally found one and it was GREAT. Then I went home and passed out. Well, I'm about to head to bed because tomorrow is my LAST day of work before my big two month break! Tomorrow night I will pick up a friend from high school at the airport and then the two of us will hop on the overnight train to Beijing to meet Nathan. We will spend a week there and then take the train back down to Shanghai were we will spend another week of me showing her around and just hanging out. She flies out on the 18th and my mom flies in on the 19th. I will then show my mom around Shanghai until the 24th and then the two of us will fly down to the Yunnan province of China (which is supposed to be the most beautiful). We will spend a week there and then she is going to fly home and I am going to fly to Vietnam! I am then spending 11 days backpacking Vietnam by myself. I fly into Hanoi and fly out of Saigon, somewhere in there taking the two day train between the two. I will then fly from Saigon to Bangkok and meet up with Nathan. Then the two of us are going to spend two weeks backpacking Thailand making sure to hit up the rainforests and the beaches. Basically I am BEYOND excited and its going to be the trip of a life time. As I've said before, one of the major reasons I did this whole coming to China thing was to travel and I'm sooo glad that everything worked out to allow me to travel (and have the means to do so, thanks again Mom, Dad, Lisa and Grandma)! I will be sure to take hundreds of pictures and hopefully will be able to stop by Internet cafes to update everyone while I'm traveling and to let everyone know I'm safe.