04 April 2009

china, day two


30 march 2009
day two - en route to beijing

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"you must be swift as a coursing river,
with all the force of a great typhoon,
with all the strength of a raging fire,
mysterious as the dark side of the moon."
-mulan

----

as promised, my alarm woke me up far too early for all the fun i'd had the night before. reluctantly i got out of bed and showered. i even dried my hair! it was a great change of pace to be able to wear my hair down and to not have to worry about sweating and having to wear it pulled back.

i packed quickly, focusing on bringing warm clothes. dad wonderfully provided weather forecasts for the beijing area, so i knew it was going to be cold. there was even a chance of snow! i haven't seen any of that since january! packing everything into my backpack, i hoped i'd packed enough warm clothes - leggings, gym pants, sweat pants & all the long sleeves i brought with me. double checking that i had all of my cameras and chargers, i was ready to go!

a quick ship breakfast of french toast and orange juice, and we were ready to go. our group of 13 was assembled and we headed out to meet our guide. kelsey, mckendree, teresa, lisa, jackie, nick, becca, mandi, shannon, colleen, whitney, jackie and myself traipsed through the mall, through the neighboring hotel and awaited our bus in the parking garage nearby. eventually, after learning that our original bus had broken down, a new bus came to pick us up.

the ride to the airport was quiet and i'm not entirely sure how long the ride was; i fell asleep almost instantly. so has become the routine any time a sas kid gets on a bus or train-- we are all instantly asleep! its like driving a baby around in the car; we all talk for a couple of minutes but it doesn't take long for the ipods to come out and our eyes begin to close.

prior to falling asleep i took in the city around me. hong kong was such a tease! i had a great day in the city but would love to spend more time there. according to may and darren, it was rather easy to assimilate and there was plenty of english. i'd love to go back! word had it that mainland china was much different from hong kong, and i was unsure of what to expect.

we arrived at the airport at 1030, and were instantly overwhelmed with the size of the airport. after struggling to keep our group of 13 together (which should have been easy, compared to the other 150 person group that would soon arrive behind us), we checked into our flights. the tour company arranged it so that we did not need to have tickets but that our passports would suffice.

a little more waiting and we made our way to the gate. the entire airport was huge-- most certainly the largest airport i've ever seen, with 80 gates!-- but it was incredibly calm. being an international flight, i expected it to be a stressful trip through security. i did not feel rushed, anxious or stressed as i usually do when waiting to go through security. the lines moved quickly and we were soon waiting for the train to take us to our gate.

after finding gate #6, we were determined to find starbucks. or simply coffee. we left our gate and ventured to the main floor, which was a sprawling mall type setup. there was a significant number of sas kids, all in line at burger king or clustered around computers. weaving through the crowds of people, we failed to locate the familiar green logo of starbucks. about to give up and grab some no-name coffee (heaven forbid, as if starbucks was the end-all, be-all), we found the starbucks. that made for quite the assembly of happy campers.

making it back down to our gate, we had little time to spare before it was time to board. when our flight was called there was a total of about 25-20 semester at sea kids on our plane. we loaded into a large bus and drove out to the airplane, as opposed to boarding via one of those tunnels. we were dropped off right at our plane and boarded via the stairs. luckily teresa and i checked in together, so i knew i'd be sitting with her. she wanted the window, so i had the middle seat. there was a man next to us, though he slept the entire time.

our flight was nearly 4 hours, but included lunch and complimentary drinks. there was also an in-flight movie, though i could not tell you what it was about. teresa and i spent the majority of our time listening to my ipod (the beatles, of course) and chatting away. there were a couple of sas kids in front of us and we helped them with their crossword puzzle. all that practice at the european shoppe, they were impressed with my knowledge of crazy clues.

the flight went smoothly, with not too much turbulence. i got a little nap in, and soon we were landing. the air outside simply looked colder as we touched down in beijing-- no more tropical weather for us! walking through the tunnel to the airport made it clear that jackets and scarves would be necessary if we were to stay comfortable in beijing.

after clearing customs and retrieving our bags, we were greeted by our guide, vincent. we never quite locked down his age, but he looked young. proficient in english and so willing to help, vincent was absolutely vital to our survival in beijing. he was incredibly patient with our tardiness and waited while we all got coffee or visited the 'happy house' (bathroom).

i got a delicious latte at starbucks and spent a few moments talking with a professor about our program. the man was from webster college in st. louis missouri and he was the director of their masters programs abroad. i love talking about semester at sea, so it was fun to talk about our program without a language barrier.

we soon left the airport and headed to our hotel. we had a great purple bus, with enough room for all of our belongings and seats to ourselves. the bus, along with our driver, would be ours for the duration of our stay.

a short drive through the city and we were at the hotel, along with the 150+ other semester at sea students who were using the same tour company. all checked in, we quickly changed and headed out to dinner. we begged vincent to join us, and he led us through the streets to a local restaurant. the walk was chilly! i felt like i was back on the campus of unh, walking to holloway for dinner.

thank goodness for vincent, is all i can say. had he not been at the restaurant, i'm sure we would have ended up with octopus or something. with becca's input, a picture menu and vincent's translations, we ordered nearly 10 dishes. chinese is often eaten family style and served on large lazy susans, to ease the passing of dishes.

some of the dishes, to the best of my memory, were: fried rice, white rice, plain noodles, spicy chicken with peanuts, roasted duck (with the head..), scallion pancakes, tofu soup, eggplant, shrimp, and lots more. all i can tell you is that the food was amazing. and nothing like the chinese food we have at home. the principles are the same, but the preparation is different. i often order lo mein at home and could not find it on any of the menus in beijing. similarly, chicken with broccoli was prepared differently-- more broccoli, less chicken. this seemed to be the theme for most of the meat dishes: heavy on the veggies, light on the meat. which was perfectly fine for me!

i'm sure we were at dinner for nearly 2 hours, just sitting and enjoying each others company. i'm sure we were quite loud in comparison to most of the other guests, so it was fortunate that we had our own private dining room on the second floor. we had a great time with vincent, who was probably confused by most of our humor. he assured us that he was having a great time, and that his tours are generally older people, so he was glad to have people more his age. i suppose that we often forget how unusual it is for students our age to be touring  the countries we've seen. most people on the guided tours are retirees, so a bunch of college students are a rarity.

all in all, our dinner came out to a whopping 7 usd a person, which included wine (which was awful and tasted like grape juice..) and beer. for 14 people, that would never happen anywhere in the states!

eventually we made our way back to the hotel, which i was more than happy to do. we'd had a long day of traveling and a long day of sightseeing ahead of us. i wasn't interested in going out to bars or anything, so i headed back to the hotel. shannon, my roommate and a fellow unh student, and i tried to find an english program on our tv and nearly gave up; until we found the jack nicholson & diane keaton movie, 'somethings gotta give.' it was so odd to watch television in english!

i was soon fast asleep on my rather hard bed. they looked so deceiving! the fluffy white duvet and pillows made it seem as though we'd be sleeping on feather beds. this was not the case, but i was nearly too tired to care.

our wake up calls were set at 730, and we needed to be on the bus by 830 for a full day of sightseeing.

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