Trying to find the Airport and Arriving in Beijing...

I left campus around 1:30 on Thursday. Sumana was taking care of the cash flow because I couldn't get yuan in time and she can get yuan for no fees through her bank. So that was fantastic of her. I am gonna owe her so much money but I'll just pay in Hong Kong dollars, i guess. It'll be interesting to see exactly how much this trip costs me. Ah well. What can you do. Its an adventure and sometimes you just have to let caution go to the wind. (whoa. did I just say that?).

Anyway, I met her at the MTR station and it was funny because I had an actual something to tell her but as soon as I saw her I was like WOOHOO! We both did this hop, skip and a jump because we were so excited. Anyway we made our way up to the border and as we were went farther and farther up into the New Territories the surroundings felt less and less like Hong Kong and more and more like India. Not to the same extent, I don't think but much, much closer. We got to the border and ended up crossing and we were slightly violated by PRC people (When you cross the border you have to fill out a health declaration form and before they let you into China, they point this temperature gun to your head to make sure that you are not running a fever. It was pretty funny but definitely not expected at all..I felt a little violated but I guess thats part of the experience!

Anyway, we crossed the border and we started looking for the Bus to the airport because we knew it would take between an hour to two hours to get there and we didn't want to miss our flight. Boy was this a difficult task! First of all, we crossed the border and it seemed like almost immediately noone spoke English anymore. I am glad I brought Vijay's Mandarin phrasebook because it definitely helped us at that point. We asked people how to get to "feiji chang" which is the word for airport and people would start rambling off in Mandarin and we were just like, "umm, okay. Xie Xie" And then kind of head off in the direction that their quick hands were pointing. We walked up and down the bus terminal, first meeting this one creepy kind of guy when he came up to us while we were trying to match chinese characters on the wall and we figured we might as well ask him how to get there and he pulled out his phone started typing numbers on to it and then showed us "40 for one, 80 for two" and we thought he meant by bus but we were really, really skeptical. So we started walking with him a little bit and then he calls over this teenage boy and he offers to take our bags, obviously we said No and then we followed VERY slowly behind him and then we saw him gesture to his friends like with his thumbs up and nodding and all and we decided to get outside of that situation really fast. We just were like, "uhh, no thank you" and walked in the other direction. After asking a bunch of people, we ended up finding the bus (which was in some alleyway) and then left for the airport.

The first difference I noticed was the fact that no one was speaking any English. The second thing that I noticed was that there were soo many cars on the road! I don't know why I noticed that so well but I most definitely did and it kind of freaked me out (I can only imagine what its going to be like when I get back to the States). Anyway, we made our way to the airport and checked in and I took pictures of planes for my brother and then we boarded the flight (20 minutes late). We left at around an hour after we were supposed to leave and got to Beijing on time- don't ask me how that works. I don't have any idea. We got off the plane and got our baggage and tried to follow the directions to get to the Happy Dragon Hostel.

People didn't want to speak English but we managed to use our phrasebook and Sumana's background in Mandarin to figure out that we needed to take Bus 2 and where we were supposed to stand. We got on the right bus and then tried to figure out when we were supposed to get off. It was about 11pm so we were a little nervous as to how we were getting there. We tried to listen to the half Mandarin/half English announcements but the speaker wasn't working so we could not understand anything. An older gentleman that was sitting next to us asked us if we needed help and we asked if we could take the train to Dongsi Station from Dongzhimen Station (where we were going to get off). He proceeded to tell us that the trains stop running at 11 and that we would have to take a taxi. He started to ask where we were going and the address and all. We were very skeptical to tell him because we had heard horror stories but he saw the paper that we had in our hands and so he asked for it. He looked at it for a long while and Sumana and I were very much like.. "uhh, whats going on...we probably shouldn't have done that" but he seemed nice and then we were hopping that he would not get off the bus at the same time that we did but he, of course, did but then walked the other direction after saying bye. Nice man.

Anyways, we are standing outside at this bus station and this man is nearby and he looks kinda drunk and hes smoking a ciggarette and then there was this other more legit looking guy who asked if we needed help. We said we did and once again he asked us where we were going (I HATE THAT QUESTION) but we showed him because we really had no other choice. We hailed a taxi (on the first try..woohoo!) and tried showing the taxi driver the address of the hostel (in Chinese) and he would not accept it and said no. And then started driving away. The second taxi that we asked wouldn't do it either and then we asked the man to help us and he tried talking to the driver but the driver decided to start driving away as the man was talking (definitely not very nice).

Anyway, I guess the man was worried about us a little bit so he let us share a taxi because he was going in a similar direction. He took the paper from us and then explained to the driver what exactly we were looking for. Then he asked us where we were from and told us that he lives in New Jersey and was here for a conference. He got off at his hotel and then told the taxi driver to clear the tab for us so we would start from wherever he got off (Such a nice gesture!). We thanked him profusely and then we made it to the hostel without incident. Awesome old-man-taxi driver. :)

We were received by the Hostel's staff that came out to greet us and took our bags inside and then we went to check in. We were trying to check in and the man essentially said "Did you get my email this morning?" Our response.."No......" to which he replied "Oh, well our guests from today decided that they wanted to extend their stay today and so we don't have any place for you tonight. I can drive you to our sister hostel and you can stay there and then I can pick you up in the morning" We were frustrated with that but we kind of just accepted it (and had no other options and just laughed at the luck that we were having all day). We were weary of him too, especially because he decided to drive in the narrowest, smallest, darkest alleys that he could find; but we ended up getting to the sister hostel and checked into a room that had one other girl staying in it. We woke her up by turning on the light and told us about her stay here and asked us small little questions and then went back to sleep. We weren't quite sleepy so I told Sumana about how Ben was reading reviews of this place a couple days before and it said something about how they had overbooked the hostel and sent the people to stay elsewhere where they had awful beds. Our beds were pretty comfortable. We wanted to get up early to go explore but we decided that we would try and get a full nights sleep because thats probably going to be a little difficult int he coming days. We woke up at like 9:15 were ready by 10:30 and checked out whereby we had to wait for a good 30 minutes for the guy to be called to pick us up. We checked into our actual hostel but were told that our room wasn't ready so we put our luggage in storage (after locking it..thanks to my mom who packed my luggage lock in my suitcase before I came to Hong Kong!) and then set out on our way..

We eventually found the subway station and then made our way to the Silk Market. We roamed around there for quite a while and looked for walking shoes for Sumana so that we could go to TGW on Sunday. We found some and then we bargained with the lady for a bit and I ended up with a pair of fake Puma shoes as well. My only frivolous purchase of the day..though I could use another pair of shoes so I guess its not totally frivolous. We walked around and tried to find a wallet for Sumana and found a stall that we liked. She found a wallet that she liked except it said that it was made out of genuine leather. She asked the guy if it was real leather and he said "yes yes, real leather" and then took a lighter to the material to show us. Then shes told him, "Oh, well then I don't want it" and he asked why and she said it was for religious reasons and then he said, "Oh yes, yes. Its not real leather! I just tell everyone its real leather.Seee!.." and then he proceeded to show us the plastic layering on the inside. Hilarious. We wandered around some more and got slightly manhandled and pulled into stalls and then went upstairs to the clothing section where I bargained with a guy from 400 ish for a sweater down to 65. I went from 50 to 65 and didn't budge until he came down all the way. He was fun and nice too. Its a cute sweater and I am really excited about it. Then we went to what we really wanted (what I really wanted/needed) a winter coat! We found a stall that seemed to have pretty nice ones and we tried on coat after coat and finally found one that I liked and asked how much it was and she started at $1700 yuan!!!!! Of course I am not paying that. I told her I wanted 150 but then upped it to 200 and then stayed there until she came all the way down to what I wanted. Its 30 USD but I really like the coat and am completely happy with the purchase. We left there to go up to the fourth floor (THERE ARE SO MANY STALLS) to find little trinkets. There was this stand when you got out of the elevator that sold scrolls with people's names on them. The artist would look up your name in a chinese-english dictionary and then would spell it out. It was really cool.

I think we are going to go back on Monday. so that we pick touristy things up and then don't need to worry about it later. :) I think I also want to buy a wristlet for formal occassions..I think I can get it for around 30 yuan (5ish USD).

After we finished shopping we made our way to the train station and met a nice old man that helped us to get to the Lama temple where we were supposed to meet my friend Elizabeth for dinner. He kept wishing us a pleasant evening. He was nice. We were already running late and then we got to the station and didn't quite know how to get there and the maps in the subway station weren't helping because they were all written in Chinese. We asked someone (who apparently was not a local) and he asked someone else and then he explained it to us. We were able to find it (after walking down some ways) and crossed the street (which was an adventure in itself) and then walked down a kind of dark alleywayish. We weren't quite sure how far to go but I saw Elizabeth and after watching out for cars went and gave her the hugest hug ever. We went inside and sat at this really nice vegetarian restaurant and we had a buffet dinner which was scrumptious and talked about everything under the sun.. about her family, my family, her adventures, and her language immersion program and just about everything else that you could imagine.

At around 8 or so we decided that we needed to get back to the silk market before it closed to pick up the watercolors and we were going to run late. We got to the silk market around 8:50 and the downstairs was closed so we ran upstairs and outside and around and crossed the street and Elizbeth used her mad, amazing Mandarin skills to get us past the guard in order to pick up our things.

We went back to the station and we tried to figure out our plans to buy Sumana's ticket to go see her Uncle in the morning and then after writing down some quick translations and deciding that she (Elizabeth) and I were going to meet up below Mao's picture at 8:45 the next morning, we called it a night and headed back to the hostel to admire our purchases and to write this extremely long post!

On to Saturday...