China Day 3

So our third day in China was pretty low key, which was nice after the bombardment of sights, sounds, and smells from yesterday. We started out the day with breakfast at Starbucks (didn't I tell you that we'd go there!). While having breakfast we saw all sorts of runners and eventually figured out it was the Shanghai International Marathon. It was perfect weather for running a marathon, but I have to say I was glad to not be running it myself.

We wandered up and down the pedestrian shopping street a bit in the morning, but not for too long since we had to leave around 10am to head to the airport to catch our flight to Beijing. The flight was uneventful, which is always nice when it comes to flights. It was weird to actually get a meal on a flight that was only 1.5 hours long!

Once we arrived at the Beijing airport, we hailed a taxi for 6...that was interesting, seeing as how the van probably really only needed to hold 4 plus the driver, but oh well. We made it to the Park Plaza Wanfujing in one piece thankfully. Orientation for Jerry's program was at 6:30. That's when we finally met up with everyone else in the program. We were glad to have flown over a couple days prior, because those that flew over that day were looking rough! It was Keith's birthday (one of the students in Jerry's class), so he got a birthday cake while we were getting the rundown on the basic plan for Beijing. That was thankfully only about 30 minutes. Then we decided to scope out the food situation...

Luckily, we have a few really good restaurants right across the street from our hotel. One is "Fresh Hot Pot HK Style" Did we have any clue what hot pot was? Absolutely not, but we tried it out. I'm glad we did because it has turned out to be one of the best meals we've had so far. It's basically like Chinese Melting Pot. You pick out a broth base and they bring it to you in a big pot and place it on a hot plate set in the middle of your table. Then you pick out your meats, veggies, etc. to throw in there and cook. We weren't too adventurous and only got beef tenderloin, dumplings, kale, and some egg fried rice (which is WAY better than fried rice at home - not nearly as heavy). There was another group of guys from Jerry's program that had gone over there before we did, but as they didn't know what hot pot was either they just ordered the fried rice and were jealous when they saw all of our food.

So that concluded our first day in Beijing. Tomorrow is a group trip to the Great Wall...