Beijing Hikers

About 15 of us decided we wanted to get out of the city and do some hiking. I found a group online that goes hiking every Sunday. You can read about the hike we did and some others they offer at the BeijingHikers website. The hike was very intense and some parts were pretty scary. I may not be able to walk to class tomorrow morning. We were up in the mountains and climbed about 2000 feet. We were hiking for about 5 hours and covered 21km or about 13 miles. The weather was great and it was almost too warm to wear a jacket while we climbed. We passed a lot of coal mines and some very remote villages. The occasional mountain goat would cross our paths from time to time. It was a lot of fun and nice to breath some fresh air.

Kro's Nest

Last night about 30 of us headed out to a very cool pizza place that this American guy runs. Very cool place and very good pizza... lots of cheese! The owner, Kro is a young guy who sports a mohawk and speaks Chinese fluently. I am not sure what his life story is, but he seems pretty happy where he is. This will be a great place to come back to when I need a familliar taste.

Today, my roommate and I headed out into the city. We just started walking with no real plan or sense of direction. We made our way to the subway station and just got on the next train. We passed a lot of run down, poor areas in Beijing. Some areas of the city smell terrible, because of excess garbage just piling up along the streets. After getting off the subway we ventured down a street dodging traffic. Crossing an intersection here is probably one of the scariest things I've done. We walked through a large park and saw some men doing their tai chi. Then we made our way back to the subway and back to the University. This whole expedition with lunch cost me about $3.

Today was quite the experience. First I went to lunch with about 7 others. We used the pictures on the menu to order. In all we ordered about 10 plates of different food. The bill came down to about $1.20 a person. Pretty crazy. Also a 20 minute taxi ride costs about $1. The driving around here is intense. Lane lines mean nothing and traffic signals are more of guidelines.

The above picture was not taken by me, but this is where I went shopping today. It is a 6 story building that has all sorts of things. Silk kimonos, ties, rolexes, designer bags, custom made suits, gloves, belts, electronics, pearls, basically anything. (99% of the stuff is fake, but still its pretty nice.)

There are NO set prices, which means you must bargain. I bought a leather briefcase/bag for my classes here. They started the price at about 300 Kuai which is about $50. All you have to do is say tai gui le (too expensive) and the price slowly drops. It really drops as you begin to walk away. I got the bag for 90 Kuai or about $11. They are not afraid to grab a hold of you either. I had one chinese women pulling me to her store and another to the store opposite. It was pretty funny and it is a lot like a game.

My friend who is asian walks in front of me and they don't say a word to him. I guess I must look like a sucker. He is good at bartering and helped a lot of us, the chinese people got mad at him a lot for telling us we could still go lower. It was quite the experience and a lot of fun. Let me know if anyone wants anything while I'm here.

I'm Here

The flight was not too bad, watched 4 movies and the time "flew" by. I had a seat in the middle right in front of the drop down projector screen which gave my row about 6 inches of extra legroom. Most people slept on the plane, but I didn't. I went to sleep at 8pm and woke up early the next morning, no jet lag so far. We have a little shower in our bathroom that works well but gets everything soaked in there. I am on the second floor, which is good because there are no elevators.

The food is interesting and plentiful. They bring out a dish one-by-one and place it on a lazy Susanne that you spin. My chopstick skills need lots of work. My host student was trying to teach me, but had to give up. I figure by May, I will have it down. Believe it or not its not just rice. They serve a lot of meat with a variety of different sauces. It gets weird when they bring out the fish, but other than that I haven't starved yet. Everything is pretty cheap here, but I haven't had the chance to do any shopping yet.

There are crazy drivers here and the traffic is basically 24 hour rush hour. We went on a tour to Tienanmen Square, but our bus took so long to get there that we only had like 20 minutes to look around and snap some photos. I will be going back there at some point, to explore the Forbidden City. The bus then dropped us off at a lake where we did some weird ice skating. They had these chair that slid on the ice, pretty fun. A Chinese man kept making us race.

Check out my photos here

I will add photos as often as I can. The internet is a bit slow here, so it takes awhile to upload them. OK, time for my next dinner adventure.

In about 17 hours I will be on the other side of the world. I spent the night in a nunnery in Chicago with others who are attending this program in Beijing. Everyone is excited and we are all getting to know each other. Most people go to one of the many Loyola Universities around the US. My new roommate Chris, is from Michigan and goes to Saint Louis University. He and I will be sharing a dorm room at the University in Beijing. We are in an international dorm which is supposed to be the nicest dorm on campus. The other dorms cram 6-8 Chinese students in one room.

I also met another guy who goes to Marquette named Ben. It kinda felt like an episode from the Twilight Zone when I met him, because my friend Ben from Watertown, looks just like this kid and also goes to Marquette. He is going to Denmark for the semester and has a really entertaining blog. Check it out here. After dinner, we watched "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon". I hope they teach me some of those moves in my Martial Arts class.

I am writing this the morning of my trip, because I woke up a few hours ahead of schedule and was too anxious to get back to sleep. From here I eat breakfast, hop on a bus to the airport and then sail off for about 14 hours to Beijing. I have installed Skype and my name on there is colingillingham. I am 13 hours ahead of central time, so we will have to schedule our phone calls accordingly.

Stay tuned, because the next few posts will be pretty interesting. Hopefully, I can take some cool action shots and get them on here for you all to see. Zaijian for now.