After requests and threats from some of you, I have finally got around to writing another post. Either my blog is awesome or you guys have nothing better to do (maybe both?) Really guys, it's only been two weeks since my last one.
Well, I'll begin with the most recent adventures. This last weekend, all the colleges in my city had what they call a "sports meeting" which essentially a time for the student teams to play each other in different sports. Because of this, we got Thursday and Friday off from teaching. Normally, I have Thursdays off and only one class on Fridays so it wasn't that big of a deal to me. I had every intention of viewing at least a little bit of the sports meeting, but this is what happened...
On Wednesday night I went out with my Chinese friend Jake, Scottish friend Daniel, this Canadian named Tyler who is kind of a dick, Angela, and Sable. Daniel had just had an amicable breakup with his girlfriend, but he was still real down about it...and had every intention of getting piss drunk. The funniest part of the night is when we left the club and Daniel downed the rest of the beer and threw it on the ground right in front of the club smashing it to pieces...all right in front of the DJ who was just leaving. Tyler and Jake left but Daniel and I ended up staying at a barbeque drinking until about 3:30 in the morning. When I came back to my place I had to wake up the door man. He came to the door and said, "So laaaate!" I apologized and drunkenly explained to him that my friend and his girlfriend had just broken up and I just came back from consoling him. I'm not sure if he understood...
The morning after I didn't feel like doing a whole lot but went out to lunch with a few people. During lunch I got a call from Jake who asked me if I wanted to go to Beijing with him and these Belarussian girls we're friends with....in two hours. I have enough money and had no plans so I said, "Why not?" I got home, packed, and met them at the train station. The tickets for the 4:00 train were sold out so we had to get tickets for the 7:15 train...which were standing only tickets. (Sidenote: In China, they "overbook" trains so that after all the seats are sold out, you can still buy tickets. The kicker is that since you don't have a seat, you have to stand where there is room.) This was a little disappointing, but we knew we would still arrive in Beijing for prime time party time. We ate and came back to the train station only to find out that the train was delayed until 8:45 so we waited it out for another hour and a half or so. The train was packed. Jake said he had never seen a train so full of people. There was literally barely enough room to carve out your own space to stand or sit. Not only this, but employees attempted to roll carts with food and other refreshments through the overly crowded aisles. This was met by anger, both passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive, by those passengers trying to get what sleep they could in the aisle. Their anger was met by anywhere from cold indifference to annoyance from the employees. I'm not the type of person to complain and I knew I would look back and laugh about it so I just solved some sudoku puzzles, drank beer, and talked with my fellow travelers. The highlight was when someone suddenly came into our car with a box of packaged goods, and started talking very loudly, waking up many of the passengers. He was a salesman trying to sell a really odd assortment of goods, the only two I remember are foot paddings and socks that were supposed to be impossible to rip. He was right in front of me so I made funny faces at him while he was trying to give his schpiel. Most of my faces were exaggerated feigns of interest which not only made Jake and the girls laugh but also the salesman. He definitely got tripped up a couple times during his schpiel from laughing at my faces. Despite the terrible time we had standing on a hot, crowded train for three hours, I would have not felt right about leaving China without having experienced the standing only train.
We got to Beijing at 12:30, got to our hostel and actually went out to the bars and clubs at 1:30 in the morning until about 5. The part of Beijing we were in had a couple bar strips (not strip clubs, those are illegal), so we just went out, danced and had a good time. Met a man from Kazakstan (and I was not even tempted to do Borat impersonations) and a New Yorker that we hung out with for a while. The hightlight of the night was going to a club and seeing about half the hipster Chinese guys in the club were wearing black-rimmed glasses. It was pretty hilarious.
The next morning we woke up at 8 and went shopping. We went shopping in the Silk Market (this huge "mall" with pretty high quality clothes with reasonable prices you can haggle down). Not only did the Chinese merchants speak perfect English but they would practically grab at you as you walked by.
"Be a good boyfriend and buy this purse for your girlfriend!"
"You need some new shoes don't you? Want some New Balance shoes?"
While we were walking around we saw these two short, stalky Indian men talking to this Chinese girl about the price of a shirt. In a very thick accent, one of the Indian men pointed at the girl and said, "Are you crazy?! Do you have a temperature or something?" and held the back of his hand against the girl's forehead. Another time I was walking with Jake and a merchant shouted out to us, "Hey, you!" Jake looked around. Then the merchant said, "Not you! The white guy! Hey white guy!"
Jake and I decided to leave the girls for a while and go to Tianamen square. Not much else to say about that except that it was big and awesome. We watched a communist propaganda film in a shop near by. I'll put up some pictures later.
After a while Jake and I started to make our way back to the train station for our train that was leaving at 4:00. The girls call Jake and tell him that they didn't leave the Silk Market until 3:20...and it takes at least 30 minutes to get form the Silk Market to the train station...after a lot of stress, the girls arrived at the last minute and we hopped on the train.
BLITZKRIEG ON BEIJING!
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