So my trip has winded down and is now officially over. My stories didn't end when I left Chengdu though. I headed to the capital of China in Beijing for my last 4 days of my China trip. I'll do my best to give a little overview of what went down in those days.
Saturday morning I woke up at 6AM after finishing packing the night before at 2:30AM. So in the morning, I checked out of my room and got my 200 RMB deposit back and said some good-byes to Phil and Eva. I was really tired on the way to the airport but our van driver had a crazy techno mix on the radio so we all danced and acted crazy. The closer we got to the airport the more the excitement turned into sleepiness.
Everything at the airport went surprisingly smoothly. I was 6kg overweight but Kay paid for our total weight over so I had to pay her back later. The flight was surprisingly short at just 2 & 1/2 hours. I had some Sprite and couple Sichuanese style hamburgers that I had tried for the best time the day before. I didn't sleep as much as I wanted to. It took us awhile to get our baggage and move from the airport to the restaurant.
We went to a restaurant that was intended to be our introduction to Beijing cuisine. The food was good and reminded me of the type of Chinese food seen in America that is more sweet. After lunch we checked into our hotel. I roomed with Colin and really that was the only person I wanted to room with. It took awhile to check in and wait fo r
On my last day in Beijing and China, I had it free to do whatever I wanted. When we were in Tiananmen Square before, we weren't about to go the Maosoleum (the Mao Zedong Memorial). I really wanted to go see it because Mao's real body (supposedly) is in a glass coffin that visitors walk by like an open casket. Security was tight and the line was long but overall it was worth it. It was an eery feeling walking by someone I knew do so many things I didn't agree with but have such support from his victims. It was the same irony that foreigners can view in every aspect of China traveling. The guards were really just protecting the ignorance of the average Chinese person.
Following the casket-viewing, Colin, Erin, Joey, Chambers and I took a 2 RMB bus ride all the way to the Olympics area. Colin chatted with people on the bus all the way there and I just listened in from a distance as I thought about how much I time I had for everything before I had to catch a cab to the airport. We would arrive in the newly constructed district seeing the Olympic water facility known as the Watercube. This is where Michael Phelps took home all those gold medals and broke a bunch of swimming records. In the distance we could see the Bird's Nest where the opening and closing ceremonies took place. We paid an entrance fee to go inside and take all types of pictures in the two facilities. In the Bird's Nest, we were able to go down onto the field of the stadium. We saw all the "friendlys" and took some pictures with them. We started throwing a frisbee and no one stopped us. We started spreading out and just tossing when a small crowd formed around us snapping photos. Something about talented Waiguoren(foreigners) really just intrigues Chinese people.
I left by myself from the Olympic area because I was running out of time and still had a couple of things that I wanted to do. I took a taxi to ORTV's Beijing office where I toured the small office and chatted with the staff. There wasn't much to do there so I asked where I could quickly stop off before making my way back to the hotel and then to the airport. They directed me to Beihai Park which was nearby. Traffic made the taxi ride longer than it should have been so it also decreased the amount of time I had to walk the park before I had to leave.
I bought decently cheap park ticket and quickly started exploring. The park was really great with a lot of different areas and huge lake in the middle that featured an island in the middle with what looked like a stupa on top of its hill. I didn't have enough time to get to it but I swiftly walked around and snapped up photos. Running out of time, I grabbed a cab to my hotel and used the same cab to get to the airport. It was all so rushed I can't really remember all that happened. Traffic was horrible so I was a little nervous. My cab driver was cool and navigated us through the mess. It was my last taxi ride in China for who knows how long and it was so much like many of the other rides that I had taken. We chatted until all my Chinese ran dry. I can't get past a basic conversation. He helped me understand a couple new words like "terminal." I don't know how I finally came to the conclusion that the meaning of what he was saying was terminal but it moved the conversation on once I finally picked it up. It was really a testimony to the adventure I'd had this semester, along with evidence of my progress in Chinese. I came with only knowing a few Chinese phrases and I left finding out words like "terminal" without any translation.
