Beijing. WOW. You should go. Totally.

If I were to sum up this weekend in one word, it would be 'WOW'. Beijing was simply amazing in so many ways.

Andy, Rob, and I (fellow Aston English teachers) left for Beijing bright and early Monday morning. As we boarded the 4 hour train, both eager and excited, we realized that our tickets didn't have seat numbers. Thinking that perhaps this meant general seating, we took seats, but near the exit to be prudent. As it turns out, there are assigned seats. Our lack of seat numbers indicated that we just didn't have one. Since the seats in the dining car, sporting an additional fee, were all full, we huddled in a doorway corner for the remainder of the ride.

Kicking off our trip to an unconventional and surprisingly fantastic start, we arrived in Beijing and found our hostel. What a nice place! It was located close to the famous Tianamen Square, and the Forbidden City, respectively, and also right beside WangFuJing, a huge commercial street lined with fun shops. We spent our first hours in Beijing hovering inside a foreign language book store, scouring though the numerous English novels and debating which ones to buy. In the end, I purchased some historical fiction on China, a book on Taoism (the boys have huge philosophical obsessions, so I felt it important to brush up on my current nonexistant knowledge on the subject), and a book on Palmistry. That's right, I can now read palms. Check me out.

The arts of fortune telling was a major theme running consistantly thoughout the weekend. We delved head first into palmistry, learning about the mounts of the hand, the fingers, and the important lines. Andy found a more general "Fortune Teller's Bible," which provided hours of entertainment through face readings, card readings, I Ching, and Ma Jongg. Most of this took place in the nearby Starbucks; I didn't realize how much I missed real coffee and the coffee shop atmosphere until now. We spent hours in Starbucks, easing our Western yearning for copious amounts of good coffee and a familiar atmosphere. It was a nice temporary regression into the comforts of home.

Tuesday morning we headed to the Silk Market, a hugely famous shopping market in Beijing. How fun! There were 4 floors, each with countless stalls and vendors, selling everything from knock-off designer clothes to electronics. As we walked through the passage ways, the vendors shouted at us incessantly in whatever English they happened to know. "Pretty Lady! Looky Looky!" and "Cute boy! You want a scarf?" were just a few examples. One rather agressive vendor even told Andy that his jeans were ripped and dirty, as to entice him in to try on a new pair, conveniently located in her shop. Some even grabbed at us, trying to physically pull us in as a last resort. 

The key to shopping here is haggling, which also happens to be the key to making shopping fun. Because we could speak a little chinese, the venders would usually give us the lower version of the starting price. However, you can usually, with a bit of skill and tough skin, get the price down to about 25-40 percent of the original asking price. I bought a purse, hoodie, scarf and hat, coming away with some great bargins in the form of uber cute stuff.. The vendors were not always happy that we, unlike normal tourists, knew these secrets; Andy bottom lined the price for my hat at 50 yuan, and, after following us around for about 5 minutes desperately shouting ever decreasing prices, the vendor finally gave in. She glared straight at Andy as she handed over the hat, and, with a menacing finger, declared that she did NOT like him.

Later on Tuesday, we saw the Forbidden City. The best part of this experience was, honestly, waiting outside for our friend Stephanie, also in Beijing, to show up. We sat anonymously along a curb, inconspicuously attracting hoards of tourist photographers. People were snapping photos from their phones and cameras, urging their children to stand next to us for a photo, and even smoothly stepping behind us to get us in the frame. One man even approached Andy and asked him to stand and pose for the camera. It was so much fun and quite hilarious. I found one Chinese family, who had taken numerous photos of me, again inside the City, and definately got a photo with them.

Entering the Forbidden City was a bit anti-climactic, to be honest. The fog was so bad that it was hard to appreciate the former glamour of the place; the fact that there was little furniture or other relics left also took away from the overall effect. The place is enormous, though. It's very pretty too; It was what I expected, which is always a bit disappointing. The 'Chinglish', however, was absolutely hysterical. A bit dramatic, don't you think?

Wednesday, we headed to the Great Wall. Instead of going to the most touristy section of the wall, we opted to hike 10 kilometers along as more deserted part, and the most beautiful section, Sumatai. The hike was the really difficult, given the steep up and downs that the wall is made of, but totally worth it. Zip lining across a wide lake at the end, I couldn't believe that I was here. In this moment it truely hit me; I am in China!

Thursday, after lunch at The Kro's Nest, home of the gargantuan pizzas, we headed to do some DVD shopping. We tried on trendy (borderline just-plain-wierd) asian fashions, and found some more books. Then, we headed back to WangFuJing to meet our daily destiny: bugs. The scorpians are displayed on sticks, still alive and wriggling. Grasshoppers, even larger scorpians, lizards, worms, and cockroaches were all for sale for eating. We ate scorpians and grasshoppers, which were actually not that bad tasting laden in spices. I think I would do it again, perhaps branching out to the larger lizards and starfish. But cockroaches, NEVER.

Coming home was hard. The weekend seemed much longer than usual with the lack of sleep catching up to me and the long work hours going on forever. However, I made it though. All in all, fantastic week in Beijing. When can I go back again?!