October Holiday: Beijing part 2

Ironically, my favorite thing about Beijing is not Chinese.  When I was visiting the Bell Tower I stumbled across this little American style coffee shop that looks like it dropped out of Seattle.  It has a courtyard with tables and chairs in the sunshine with a little dog running around people's feet.  The whole place had the cozy but run down feel of my favorite coffee shops like Fremont Coffee Company or Cafe Ladro.  Inside had these huge posters of old movies and bookshelves filled with old books (all in Chinese, unfortunately for me).  There was this cute little white kitten that sat on my lap for a while before jumping out the open window.

I have really been enjoying the expatriot life but I do miss living in Seattle pretty much every day. It was really good for my soul to drink hot coffee in the hot sun and pretend like I was back at FCC during finals.  Plus the cat and dog were super cute and I got some cuddle time.

The day after the coffee shop I went on a tour of the traditional historical sights of China.  First was the Summer Palace.  I met some people from Spokane to hang out with, which was awesome.

The Forbidden City was also a zoo, most of the reason why I went with a tour was because I didn't want to stand in line for 3 hours to get in, which is what would have happened had I gone on my own.

There were a lot of Chinese tour groups because it was the National Holiday and we followed this really cute group of students in their uniforms.  Chinese kids are funny and are just like American kids on tour, not paying too much attention.

I went to this place that my students all called 'snack street' and I can't remember it's real name.  However, it has two blocks of crazy things to eat on a stick.  I went with two of my new friends from Spokane who kept my company on the Forbidden City tour.  We ate some normal stuff, like pork filled buns, dumplings and chicken on a stick, as well as some pumpkin cakes which are pretty good (but better and cheaper at Sias).  This picture has some of the weirder stuff like sea stars, sea snake (ate it!), shark (ate that too!), sea urchins, silk worms, scorpions, octopus, sea horses, ostrich, deer, whole pigeons, chicken hearts, intestines, tofu and the like.

I took my dad to snack street as the first thing off the airplane.  Half way through I realized that maybe that was a pretty intense 'welcome to China' but he handled it pretty well.  We did find some pretty good kung pao chicken at resteraunt near by.

Dad and I climbed the Great Wall too, but he has the pictures from that, so maybe that will be a later post or a facebook only deal.  When I say climbed, I mean CLIMBED.  Now we are both Real Men.  Or at least that's what my students said to my dad when we talked about climbing the Great Wall and I didn't wan to be left out.  Saying that I'm now a Real Woman doesn't quite feel the same.  (Don't get angry with me, feminist friends!!)

And of course I made plenty of new friends during my time in Beijing, especially the ugly stone dragons that ward off evil spirits. They are just so ugly they're cute!!