Oh God! There are two of them now!

Time to travel back in time once again. This time our destination is Tuesday, October 17. I actually made a post this day, but it didn’t have anything to do with what I’m about to say.

Well today my dad came to see me because we were going to be traveling during my fall break the following week. I was kind of worried about his arrival after I remembered that he can’t speak Chinese and even if he has Chinese directions to his hotel, the cab driver might not know where it is. After he hadn’t called me for a while I decided to walk over to his hotel and ask if he had checked in. When I got there I found out he had just checked in, so I went up to see him. The reason he was late was because of the terrible traffic, which is unavoidable in Beijing. He had a good quote something along the lines of “You know all those people who think China is going to take over the world? Well their wrong because they’re going to be stuck in traffic!”

Anyway, the first day he was here I showed him around my neighborhood and brought him to a really dirty restaurant with really good food. After eating I brought him to this big square near my school that is crowded with people every single night of the week. The main attraction there is tons of people doing these weird lines dances to different songs. I’m not sure exactly how it works because each song has a different dance, but some people do their own dance to each song. There are also lots of people selling random stuff. We were watching a group of guys playing Jianzi, which is like hackie sack, but it’s made out of feathers and little metal washers. Soon we were playing with them, which of course drew a crowd, probably because we were bad at it.

That Wednesday, I decided not to go to class, so we could go do something. That morning we went over to the big foreigner district of Beijing called Chaoyang. All the embassies and lots of businesses are over there, so there are also lots of western restaurants. We headed straight to Grandma’s Kitchen, which my friends told me was very good. It was very enjoyable having my first real American breakfast since being here along with a milkshake and a Dr. Pepper after words. Afterwards, we went to the Silk Market, which is full of silk, fake clothes, and foreigners. My dad really hated being yelled at and grabbed by people trying to get him to buy stuff. He really did enjoy messing around with them though when he was actually trying to buy stuff. I was able to help him out using my Chinese too, which was fun.

For the rest of the afternoon we went to the Forbidden City, which I had already done last summer when I was China. It’s one of those must see things that I don’t really find too exciting. That was really the end of the day as I had work to do. I thought this picture was funny because they were doing construction on the main temple, so they painted a picture of it onto the scaffolding.

Thursday was another uneventful day for me because that Friday I had a midterm that I really hadn’t started studying for. My dad went to the Great Wall while I was in class (Thursday is my heaviest load), so he had some stories. My dad though the funniest thing was the guy who he paid to drive him to and from the Wall named Mr. Duo. This guy had a car that looked normal on the outside, but my dad said he couldn’t even count the number of times he thought this thing was going to completely die on the road. My dad really enjoyed the Wall, but was really disappointed to see all of the vendors that were allowed to solicit right on it. After he came back we went to dinner again, but I had to spend the rest of the night studying.

After my test on Friday, we went to a big market a couple blocks away from my school and spent most of the day getting ready for our trip the next day. I have a feeling these next posts are going to be plentiful, so I’ll end this one here.