Day 2 - Exploring Ancient Sites and Chinese Traditions

Today was a full touring day for us! We started by going to visit Beijing's Olympic Green from the 2008 Summer Olympics. It was magnificent!









(The big stadium)



(Lookin' good)



A cultural difference between here and America that Jay and I noticed is that many of the men wear pink - we started counting how many men we saw wearing pink. And they don't just wear baby pink - they loooove hot pink as well (see above example:).

Our next stop was for lunch on the famous Wangfujing Street. Our tour guide Terry (or Pong, which is his Chinese name) said that this street is comparable to the Champs Élysées in Paris. I thought it was more like Times Square because it was chock full of billboards.




(Wangfujing Street)




(And again...)



(For Rabia:)

We had hardly any time on this street. We had to find lunch ourselves - I didn't trust the Chinese fast food, especially because I don't eat pork, so I ended up in Subway with many of the other GYLC scholars. Jay, this girl Chava (from the Netherlands) and I rushed through lunch so we could actually leave the big Chinese mall which had all of the restaurants in it. We got to walk all the way down Wangfujing Street and some of the side streets. We stopped at a candy store, where the owners were very taken with us and how different we looked from all of their other customers. We also stopped at a chopstick store, where Jay bought a bag of collapse-able chopsticks. I think everyone had a pretty interesting time on Wangfujing Street - when we met back up with our group, some people brought back scorpions on a stick to eat. How adventurous...it looked disgusting, but they claimed the scorpions were actually pretty good. Interesting...

When we boarded our buses again, we headed to Tian'anmen Square (Monument to Mao Zedong, founder of the Chinese Communist Party) and the Forbidden City (where the imperial family used to live). Everything was SO beautiful but it was about 1,000 degrees outside and we were all sweating. All of the girls tied their hair up into little Chinese buns on the top of their heads (how fitting...) and the boys took off their extra shirts. We had a great time exploring, but were really happy to get back to the air conditioned bus. Check out some of the pictures I took of the architecture and the snapshots of me with my friends!




(National Museum of China at Tian'anmen Square)



(July 1st is the 90th anniversary of the founding of the communist party of the People's Republic of China)



(Monument to Mao)



(This Chinese vendor followed my friend Victoria around for about 10 minutes, trying to sell her a Chinese fan - she didn't give in though!)

THE FORBIDDEN CITY







(Hand-painted and soooo beautiful)



(With my friend Crystal)






(My friend Gafur being a model for me:)




Before we left the Forbidden City, this adorable group of Chinese kids came up to me and started asking where I was from. They were so cute, so I asked to get a picture with them. I started a group trend and soon everyone was taking pictures with them. Their English was really impressive (especially considering how small they were). Our group leader (aka our FA - faculty advisor) Zach told us on our way out to check our bags to make sure we hadn't smuggled a child with us...they were just too cute!



(Me with the kids:)

We ended the day with a traditional Peking Duck dinner. It was actually really delicious. You eat the duck with a special sauce, cucumbers, and onions wrapped in crepe-like bread. We had a final LGM before bed. Check out the Peking Duck dinner pictures below!











(Our table: top: Anna (?), Sarah, Brianna (?), Katie, Avery, Né-né bottom: Katie, Me, Jay, and Ayesha)

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