The past few weeks have been crazy busy, but so fun! About two weekends ago we went to Wuhan where we got to visit and have an amazing time of fellowship with the rest of our team. I am so lucky to be surrounded by people who truly have a heart for HIM. I am growing so much during my time here and am thankful that He placed me here. Besides coming to Wuhan to visit/fellowship, Les and I had some important business to take care of… THE BAMA GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!! What, What! That’s right, we got to watch a live stream of the game on a T.V. at one of our team member's apartments. I’m not gonna lie it was AMAZING! We decked ourselves out with LSU fingernails, tiger tattoos, jerseys, and yummy snacks. We also made an entire playlist of LSU/Louisiana themed music, including “Callin’ Baton Rouge”, “Louisiana Saturday Night”, “All I Do is Win”, “Neck”, etc. We were legit. Anyways, the game was super intense as you all know, but of course our tigers came out on top! We’re No. 1 baby! Goin’ to the ‘ship!!!!!
The three LSU girls! We really did have an awesome time watching the game, even though it was super intense. Shout out to Ryan Matthews, who hooked us up with a live stream of the game. If you want to see more of my game day reel of pics check out my Facebook album.
On Sunday night we headed out on a night train to BEIJING!!! This was our first trip to take in China just the two of us. I think our team was worried because we don’t speak Chinese, but we knew we could handle it. Haha
It was a 10 hour train ride to Beijing from Wuhan. Luckily, we had soft-sleeper beds, which were so comfortable. We were such tourist the whole trip, taking pictures on the train and all. It was a room with four beds, basically like two bunk beds. I really enjoyed taking the train and it wash cheaper than flying. We arrived at our hotel in Beijing around 9am had a delicious Western breakfast including toast, eggs, pancakes, and bacon then headed out to explore the city.
Our first stop was Tiananmen Square. It is the world's largest public square and that is just what it looks like. It's a huge open area surrounded by government buildings, a national museum, and the Forbidden City. They have a flag raising ceremony at sunrise every morning and at sunset. Unfortunately, we never made it to either one of those. In this picture, I am standing in the middle of Tiananmen Square and behind me is the entrance to the Forbidden City. You can also see the flag pole to the right of the picture.
This picture might be my favorite out of all the ones taken on this trip. As I have mentioned before Americans take on a bit of a celebrity role here in China, especially in the small town we live in. Lesley and I thought Beijing would be different because foreigners visit there all of the time. We were very wrong! There were thousands of Chinese tourist in Beijing and most of them were probably from a small town, where there are no foreigners. We were instant hits! haha The picture above was the first one we took as celebs in Beijing. This lady just walked up to us handed each of us one of her children and jumped behind us, while her husband took a picture. Luckily, I was on my toes that day and asked the man to take a picture with my camera as well because I knew no one would believe me. After this incident, we took about 10 more pictures around the square with random Chinese people. We decided to start counting and see how many posed pictures would be taken of us over the next 3 days. Drum roll please...........................And the grand total was 74! Crazy I know!
After Tiananmen Square, we headed to the Forbidden City, which is called this because it was off limits for 500 years. It was the imperial palace for two dynasties of emperors the Ming and Qing. Before heading in through the front gates, we bought audio sets that explained everything we were looking at. We spent 3 hours checking everything out. This place is massive! I'm talking 178 acres!
My interpretation of Mulan at one of the buildings in the Forbidden City.
Just throwing money into some pond at the Forbidden City. No idea what it means because our audio sets didn't tell us, but we figured it was for good luck! haha
At the end of our 3 hour tour of the Forbidden City. (Cue Gilligan's Island theme song, which Lesley sang throughout our time here, "A 3 hour tour" get it)
After the Forbidden City, we headed to Peter's Tex Mex Restaurant. The one type of food we miss/crave the most is Mexican, so when we heard about this place we were determined to find it. It was worth it!
I told you we went a little crazy, but we just couldn't help it. When you find good Western food in China, you just have to splurge. The desserts looked so scrumptious, so we both got one. I got chocolate cake with homemade ice cream. It was the best cake ever!!!!!! This meal was worth every precious penny.
Even the waitresses at the restaurant wore shirts with the Texas flag. This place was like stepping back into the states. We both kept saying how it didn't feel like we were in China anymore. Peter knows what he is doing! We got to know our waitress pretty well, since we stayed at Peter's for over 3 hours. It was by far the best meal I have eaten while in China. We asked our waitress what part of town we should check out next and she told us Wangfujing Snack Street.
This is the snack street and it has many interesting snacks. At this stand there were scorpions, starfish, seahorses, and some other type of bug all on a stick. The worst part was the scorpions' legs were still moving. At least you knew they were fresh! Gross!
So I wasn't brave enough to eat a scorpion, but Lesley dared me to touch it. All I had to do was stick out my hand and the man immediately put the scorpions on it. Oh China! After checking out all of the interesting snacks, Les and I turned down this other section of the street that had tons of street vendors selling very touristy things and the bargaining began. Once we got started, we just couldn't stop shopping! It was so fun trying to get the vendors to go down on their prices. Since we are foreign they like to bump the prices up on us majorly, but we knew what they were doing and fought back. We also used a little bit of the Chinese we have learned, which helped a lot. Most of the vendors spoke English, but it still was helpful to be able to ask "How much?" in Chinese, which is duo shao qian and "too expensive" which is tai gui le. I will talk more about bargaining and shopping in my next post.
That wraps up my first day in Beijing. My next blog post will be Beijing Part 2, which includes climbing the Great Wall!
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