March 30th, 2009

Today was basically a traveling day to get to Beijing.  We woke up and had some difficulty finding and waiting for our bus to arrive at the port to take us to the airport.  It all worked out and we were at the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight.  When we got into the airport in Beijing is cold but not as cold as I had expected, although I also anticipated it to get much colder as we got closer to the mountains and the great wall.  We arrived at our hotel and Courtney, Erika, Kelly, and Tally were all on the second flight and would be arriving at the hotel in a few hours.  So Liana (from my Vietnam trip) ,Kendall (from reno) and I wandered around the few blocks around our hotel.

 

We went a couple of blocks from our hotel and went to an ATM, then went to a small café where we sat and had coffee and talked for a little while.  We then went back to the hotel where I waited for Court and the other girls to show up.  On our walk I saw a few groups of people playing a game some where teenagers and another was a group of little kids.  They were playing what looked like hackisack but with a different object than I have ever seen.

 

The girls finally arrived and we all got ready to go into the city for dinner.  We had the hotel right down the name of the street we wanted to go to so we could show a taxi driver because not very many Chinese people speak English.  After some effort we found a taxi and weren’t really sure we were going to be taken to the right place but when we stopped we got out and wandered around the area.  We had been dropped off in what looked like would normally be very busy part of the city near high end shopping malls and out door food market.  The market looked really good and that’s what I would have enjoyed eating but I went with the girls and we all went to a restaurant where we had our first Chinese food meal.  We each ordered one plate of something and when it came out we realized we may have ordered too much food but it was cheap and we did a pretty good job of completing all of it.  The restaurant was really nice and quite with only one other group of people eating there.  I was kind of confused but then realized it was a Sunday night and the town was really quiet, even though the streets were all lit up and there were some people walking around.  When we were done with our dinner for 13 that the four of us ate we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.