No Naked Light

From the desk of Allie..... (written on 8/4/2011)


So its official. We are in Beijing. 

We arrived around 3pm yesterday and it has been a blur of activity since we checked into our hotel.  Today we had a short meeting this morning, in which I learned just how poorly I have been saying Ni Hao (hello) and xie xie (thank you), and then we were assigned University students to take us out on the town to complete the Beijing version of Amazing Race.  We'll call it the Beijing Race. Let me start off by saying that our 2 student guides were wonderful!  First we went to a restaurant close to the hotel for lunch, which looked something like this: 

There were 10 of us and all that ended up being about $4 per person.  And it was tasty!  After lunch we went to the techie district and found the most expensive cell phone, 110,00 RMB which ends up being $1800.  No joke, it was made with diamonds.  They only had a picture of it because it could only be taken out for serious shoppers.  And well in our shorts and tank tops we did not qualify. 

The rest of the day flew by, a mix of chinese language lessons and buses and sweat. Our guides showed us Renmin University where they are students and it was remarkably similar to the pickup basketball games at Cobb and the random soccer games at Carmichael. 

Here's a random collection of photos

McDonald's delivery Man!

Parking Lot

Chinglish Signs

Now to bed, for I have random Chinese phrases leaking out of my ears.