I am lazy, sleepy and pleasantly buzzed from free alcohol some Americans bout me. I am too lazy to write I real email update so once again I will just borrow my friends email wih minor edits and forward it. I promise tomorrow I will write my own. Please forgive me. I have to get up in 4 hrs to go to the great wall of china.
Hello fam and friends,
CC, Suhir, and I have landed in Beijing at around 2:00pm Saturday, local time (2AM East Coast time). The flight was good, not too much turbulence and we made it through customs fine. (Suhir here-I slept about 12 hours of the flight. I woke up to eat and thats it. Honestly to me the flight zipped by) The hotel we're staying at is the Jinqiao Apartment Hotel. If I get a chance, I will upload some pictures later of the hotel. It's a suite and we have a little kitchen that even has a little washer machine. But, the beds are not so great. I don't know how the Chinese do it, but the beds are literally hard as rocks! It's so funny, because we anticipated fighting over who was going to have to take the cot to sleep. As it turns out the cot is waaayyyy more comfie than the beds! So, we're on a rotating cot schedule! For our first adventure we went out to eat at a Korean BBQ resteraunt. Yes, that's right, we traveled all the way to China to eat Korean food. BUT, it was authentic Korean food and it was really good. Of course, in the process of ordering the great Korean food we thouroughly embarrassed ourselves. There was a language barrier. We ordered a dish to share (as is the custom at the Korean BBQ), but then the waiter guy kept saying something to us in gibberish that we interpreted as 'You must order more.' What he was really saying was, 'You stupid Americans, that's way too much food.' (Suhir here- We were incredibl stupid. I thought he was saying the dish was unavailable. So I picked something else. In the end the food we ordered could easily have fed 8 people.) In the end, they brought out a ton of beef, and lamb, and rice, and other dishes that I have no idea of what it was. The waiter laughed at us when he saw our faces. We laughed at us when we saw all the food. Then we ( Suhir here-We my ass this was me. That call probably cost me more then the meal) called our Tour Guide and he had to tell the waiter in Mandarin that we ordered too much food and that we wanted to pack it up to take back home. It was so very sad, yet funny at the same time. (Suhir here-I felt bad but our waiter adamantly REFUSED to take a tip. The Chinese are nuts) Oh, and the best part was that the manager came over in the middle of the meal with the bill. We thought for sure it would be like a hundred bucks. Even the manager wondered if we would have the cash to pay for the meal --200 Yuan. (Suhir here -He demanded payment up front which should have been clue number one we had over ordered) Do you know how much that is in dollars? It's 30 bucks. When we saw it was 200 Yuan we were sooo happy. And the manager was shocked that we could casually pull out 100 Yuan each (CC didn't have her Chinese money yet) and pay the bill no problem. The people at the restaurant thought we were super rich. (Suhir here- Cherise had just been to the ATM. SHe had about 400 bucks in her wallet. The manager's eyes almost popped out of his sockets when she pulled her money out. 400 bucks equals around 3000 Yaun.) Okay, so next we went to the Lake bar district which was all sorts of awesome (Suhir here- Lots of Bars, forigners and cool little shops) . We immediately started buying things and haggling on the price. (Suhir here- Cherise makes us sound like King bargainers but unfortunetly we are week. I am convinced we over paid for everything. However we did get price drops on all our purchases) Then we wondered over to this bar that was playing hip-hop music. Inside were all these young Americans (20's/30's). They bought us drinks and come to find out that they are all NBC PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS!!! We told them we planned on going to the Today show on the 19th. OMG, they were soooo excited. They said they would look for us and make sure we got on TV. So now you know you MUST tape the TODAY show on Tuesday, the 19th. Okay, I'm really tired now as it is 2AM in the morning (Suhir here-2:53 now). Just to let you know Beijing is GORGOEOUS!! There is ZERO pollution and in fact my sinuses have never been better. I may just have to move here! (Suhir here- I concurr completely. The city looks clear and beautiful. The air is fine. If I hadn't seen it smog infested on TV I would never know it ever had been) And the Chinese people are soooo nice. They really like us for some reason. They keep repeating everything we say; when we say 'okay' they giggle and say 'okay' really, really excited like; also, when CC was on the phone with the Tour Guide and said 'hello' one of the waiter dudes giggled and was like 'Hehehehehe, 'hello;' I don't know why, but they get a kick out of hearing Americans say 'hello' and 'okay.' (Suhir here- I feel like we are the only black Americans they have ever seen. They stare A LOT. It' weird. The crowded around our table. They repeat everything we say. Hard to get use to.) Anyhoo, the Great Wall is tomorrow. I'll let you know how it was.
Peace and Love, Cherise xoxox (Suhir)
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