Noodles!

01/12/08

Noodle House- Revisited

I woke up this morning at 7, because I went to bed at 9. As you can tell, I was a Friday night party animal. Will was asleep, but Junta was up and we had a lovely cup of tea together (because they bring us hot water and tea every morning outside our door) and then tried to go to the bank to exchange his traveler’s checks and my hundred bucks.

The first bank that we hit was the Agricultural Bank of China, and they didn’t exchange money and referred us to the Bank of China, which was just off campus and just a hop across the sign-ignoring highway of death and despair™. Once we got there, though, we were told that the Bank of China only exchanged money Monday through Friday.

A quick side note- next to the Bank of China was a two-story KFC Select. This is the third KFC that I’ve seen since I arrived in Beijing. I have yet to see a single McDonalds, but the lines at every single KFC were of Disney-worldly proportions. I don’t get it.

For lunch we went back to the Noodle-house, where Junta helped me order spicy noodles (do-dao-mein, or something like that). It was considerably easier than the previous Noodle-house experience, except for the whole chop-stick-to-eat-soupy-noodles thing. There’s a guy in our group named Steve, and he can’t use chop-sticks at all. I tried to teach him. He’s probably going to starve.

After lunch, the entire group took a trip to the Forbidden City, right in the middle of Beijing. It took about an hour to get there by bus- and we aren’t even at the edge of the city. The palace complex was impressive, with every gate holding behind it another, larger courtyard with another, larger temple-pagoda-house-thing. Here’s a picture of what I mean. I’m standing at the gate of a very similar building to what is behind me.

See?

There were some neat places, though, like extensive rock gardens. In one place we found an elevated stone table with stone seats. We figured it was for tea or paper rock scissors. That was supposed to be amusing because we’re playing paper rock scissors, but you can’t really tell in this picture. Oh well.

(From left to right- Me, Jennifer, and Will)

I really appreciated the English subtitles that they had on every gate- “Gate of Tranquility,” “Gate of Respectable Thoughts,” “Gate of Martial Valor,” etc… but my favorite sign was this one:

(The more you care for the palace,

the more the palace shows its splendour.)

I appreciate the sentiment.

After walking through the Forbidden City (which was a long, long walk) we arrived at Tiananmen Square (“where nothing bad has ever happened™”). It was a very, very large square… there’s not really much more I can say, aesthetically, about a giant slab of concrete. It was worth seeing, though.

This evening I’m going out with Jordan and Glen, who live across the hall and are very good at Chinese, to get some hamburgers. At first I felt bad because I was abandoning the local food so quickly, but honestly, I think hamburgers might be healthier than all the delicious grease I’ve been putting in my system.

Finally, as promised, here are some pictures of “Hotel California”

Building 5, sweet Building 5.

My bed is on the left. See? It’s a hotel. Except without anywhere to put your clothes. Mine currently live in the TV cabinet.