Day 2 in Beijing

My second day in China was long but fun and interesting. I got to explore more of the city and try some new foods. Jetlag is definitely messing up my sleep. It’s not very often that I wake up by 6am two mornings in a row without an alarm clock. But then by 9:30 at night, I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

Eating here is always an adventure. Even something as simple as a container of yogurt becomes a story: The lid peeled off into two parts and trying to puncture the second seal, I splashed yogurt all over my face. Oops. For breakfast I had a soup with egg, tomato chunks and lots of rice noodles. It was almost impossible to eat with the utensils I was given. The noodles were about two feet long so eating them with a spoon (which is not like the spoons we have in the States) was out of the question and there is no easy or neat way to eat noodles with chopsticks. I picked at the bowl for probably half an hour and had barely eaten a quarter of it. Plus I had splashed of the broth all over my shirt. Lunch was much simpler to eat. We (almost all of the teachers) went to a Yunnan (a province in southern China) restaurant. We sat down and they handed us menus written entirely in Chinese characters. Some of the returning teachers knew what was good and available at the restaurant. Between Hannah and Mike, they were able to come up with the right Chinese names for the food. The way food is served at a Chinese restaurant is quite different from in the States. Instead of everyone ordering a plate for themselves, a bunch of food is ordered and everyone just eats out of all the plates which are placed in the middle of the table. It doesn’t seem very sanitary (grabbing food with chopsticks, eating it off the chopsticks and then putting those same chopsticks that were in your mouth back in a common dish) but it’s fun and I get to try more food. My favorites were the really spicy tofu (which we were told wasn’t going to be too spicy) and the pineapple rice (sweetened rice with bits of pineapple mixed in and served in a pineapple). For supper, we were really tired and just decided to get something simple so we went to a restaurant that served a variety of porridges. A lot of them sounded really good and I decided to try the rose with jasmine tea flavored one. It wasn’t as good as the name sounded. It was pretty bland (I would have put some cinnamon or vanilla in it) and the rose part of it was actual rose buds mixed in it. I ate one rose but that was enough. Maybe if I had been more awake, I would have been more adventurous.

Crazy story of the day: Mike decided that he wanted to move his plants (which had spent the summer on the Joshes’ porch, five blocks away) back to his apartment. He rented a three wheeled bike with a flat area on the back to load the plants on to. An important detail to know is that Mike does have just two or three small plants. It’s more like enough to start an entire green house including one the size of a small tree. Chinese people stare at us normally because we’re foreigners. Walking a bike down the street completely loaded full with plants made them laugh which was ok because I was laughing too. It must have looked hilarious. I’ll try to post the picture.

I am now one step closer to successfully living in China: I have a bike! Mike took three of us newbies bike shopping yesterday. He said he knew this great place with tons of bike shops to choose from. When we got there, there were only two shops left. All the rest had been torn down and a wall was being built in front of where they had been. After buying our bikes, we tried going to a different market that sold household items but there was nothing left of it except piles of broken cement and bricks. Clearly these two areas didn’t make the cut for the new and improved Beijing when they host the Olympics in 2008. I picked out a really cute pink and silver bike with some small yellow flower decorations. It came with a basket, a bell (to be used more like a horn) and two locks. I paid 260 kuai for it which is about $32. Riding it has a totally different feel then my bike back home. Instead of leaning over to reach the handle bars, I sit straight up, kind of like an old fashioned bike. Now the trick will be to get it to last the whole year and not have it stolen, broken or otherwise…