Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Twenty-third Post Ever...
Hi! (again)Well, I'm back to blog more about China...so here goes:
Our second day in China was merely spent walking around, exploring Beijing. We walked for like..almost all day! We went to Starbucks that morning becuase mom needed coffee...they had some really neat starbucks Beijing mugs too.
And then we shopped at the Pearl Market, I don't think I bought anything the first day...I know Nicole bought something, but I can't remember...anyways! And then we walked back to the hotel, stopped at McDonald's again, had some lunch, and decided on what to do next. We were gonna do the zoo, but I was so pschyed about the shopping, I wanted to go to the silk market...so go to the Silk Market we did!
We bought gramma some really pretty silk, and I think dad bought a backpack.
The people there are insane! Not litterally, but it's just SOOO different there. Like there are all these young people, sitting in their little stalls, and they're like, "Oh! Lady, you want purse. Best price for you!" and then you get there and they like start at like 100$ and you tell them no way! And then they go a bit lower, and ALL of these people have calculators, so they hand you the calculator, and once you start bartering for that thing, you don't get away until you buy it! It's absolutely crazy! I started to talk to this one lady about a pair of shoes I thought were kind of cute, so I asked her how much, and then the calculator came out. And then after she tried to sell me on a couple of prices (no pun intended), I decided that they weren't comfortable, so I just told her no and left. She came bolting after me, "No! Very gooda gooda! You want! Come back, I give you best price!" And then she grabbed me and I'm like...woah! seriously! It was pretty wierd. One girl actually chased dad all the way downstairs trying to get him to buy me(or mom, can't remember) a purse. She had it down to like 20 yuan. (which is like less than $5) Anyways, it's pretty fun even still. And you can get SO much different stuff!!! Like mom bought this weird fruity-sugary thing and I didn't taste it, but it looked pretty wierd.
Anyways, enough about shopping, their driving is just as incredibly odd! They all just sort of obey the rules. We did a full U-turn in the middle of a six lane road! And no one honked, but they honk for everything else! We had a cabbie, who honked 50 or 60 times in a 9 minute cab ride! 'Twas unbelievable! And the pedestrians!!! If we tried to cross the street here, the way they do there, we would all be dead in 10 seconds flat! It's just....so....CRAZY!!! I don't know how else to describe it.
We also saw a whole WHACK of street-side vendors. A lot of them sell jewlery, some sell socks, some sell shirts, some sell DVD's...we saw one guy selling turtles! Like real live mini turtles! I wanted one, but I didn't think I could smuggle it through customs...there was also a guy selling puppies...(I wanted one of those too, but again, trying to bring it back into the country would be a LITTLE hard)..and there was yet another guy selling these PUNY rabbits in these even PUNIER cages...poor rabbits..they all hardly had room to turn around, and they were all stacked up in a cardboard box! I just wanted to buy them all and set them free.....Nicole and I both got very squeeky on more than one occasion! (LoL) We went to Pizza Hut for supper, and had stuffed crust pizza, and one bowl of salad from the salad bar. It's wierd, you only have one shot at the salad bar, so there were all of these Chinese girls going and making HUGE towers out of the salad...they must do it alot, cause some of them looked like proffesionals, the way everything was layered perfectly...
Anyways, that was pretty much our second day....I've typed enough for one day I think, and I need to go do some school, so I'll stick some pictures in this narrative of mine and get going!!!
See everyone later!!!
xoxoxo
Amanda at 12:27 PM
1 Comments
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at 10:59 PM
3-of-5 said... Keep the posts coming! You have a great way of explaining what you did. I really get a feel for what you were doing and feeling. Very cool!
P.S. The teacher in me just has to say, weird - it is one of those no rule 'e before i' words. Sorry, blame it on having to teach spelling for the past five years! Not that my grammar and spelling is perfect, oh well. I love you ;)