I'm a day behind on posting

Ok, so I guess I'm a day behind. Yesterday I don't really remember well, actually, yes I do. So the key parts of yesterday were that we were supposed to meet at around 11...I think to go to a group lunch. We walked pretty far and it was next to a Friendship Hotel thing, which are all over China, I think.

The place we went to served us soo much food, luckily it wasn't all spicy. But surprisingly, this family style restaurant with soo much food seemed to be not as good as the place that we went to the night before, before the thunderstorms had started.

I wanted to take more pictures this time, because I didn't take many before, so I brought it and took some pictures of the food, a nicely presented celery-ish dish, and then a group picture. The group picture of the table, which included our program director, was taken by a woman (fu wu yuan) that I asked, and SHE DIDN'T EVEN INCLUDE ME IN MY OWN PICTURE. Man! When she was taking it, I was like, ummm don't you want to move back, she was such a noob! Whatever, we got a good group picture, minus the people on the end (about 4 people, including me and the program director), oh, well...I took more pictures later that day.

It seems to me that the people that we eat lunch with, or happen to eat a meal with, are the people that we inevitably hang out with that day. So we met these two girls who we hung out with later that day, we also went with my roommate Allen.

It was so daaamn annoying. We were going to get back from the restaurant and then immediately go to the bank, get the money from our traveler's checks and pay for our dorm. NOT. We go there, I got in line and I was the next up, pretty nice considering the others had to wait forever to get to their line. However, as soon as I was up in line the damn woman said that her line was closed, she was the only person servicing my number! RIP OFF! That really pissed me off. I was waiting for a while and then even asked her, but no prevail.

Anyway, I felt pretty nervous about carrying that much cash with me, wouldn't you? SO, we decided to go to China Construction Bank down the street, which is the bank affiliated with BoA in the US. But when I got there, then got in line, the man told me that they don't do traveler's checks and to go to Bank of China, WHERE WE JUST WERE! AhHHH. Luckily, I had some cash, so I took it out and then exchanged it. We almost had a problem where the guy said my $20 was a fake $20, but I told him to try a couple more times and it passed through his fraud detector machine. Thank god, I had money to go shopping. That WAS our destination after all, Dongwuyuan.

So after we got cash, we walked back to the apartment, I locked up my remaining unexchanged traveler's checks and passport and we got my roommate and then we headed to the bus stop.

This is where it got a little confusing. We couldn't find the right bus, so we ended up asking people what we should do. Oh man, I felt sooo useful here. I asked the people and they told me, but Tammy didn't trust him because he looked a little confused and then so she asked, we got two different things. The second guy we asked told us to take a bus that just came and then later we had to ask a woman on the crammed bus where to go. She gave us better directions and it turned out that we took 2 buses to get to the place, where we only really needed 1 bus. Whatever, it was a long, sweaty, smelly adventure. I really enjoyed it.

We finally got to our destination after the two buses, which we later figured out we could have gotten on the right bus (104) if we had taken the first guy's directions. Dongwuyuan is a Zoo and Tammy thought we were going to the wrong one, it turns out that we were at the right one, the Zoo is just next to the shopping area. When we went in it was gigantic, but I had been there before, or some place like it. The place was large, crowded, dark, but had some nice A/C in some places. We walked around forever and only got one thing, which was for Tammy to hang her clothes. I felt so useful, for the SECOND TIME, when I bargained for her thing. It was 25 kuai each, but I got it for 30 for two. Man, the tricks and skills my sister taught me really helped. I am soo good, haha not really.

So then we left, after spending a LONG time over there. My feet were sore, and so were everyone else's. We went to this place to eat, kinda like a fast food place with noodles, which were spicy, again. Then we got some soup, that was tasteless, nice little fish cakes, and I had some of Tammy's chinese donut..mmmmm. It was pretty good.

After "dinner" we walked to this area across the street which people were using to practice roller skating, in-line, speed skating and some weird one foot maneuver cone thing. It was fun to watch, but we walked on and saw a 3-story McDonalds. After that, we walked more to find a bus and realized we went the wrong way and had to walk back, over a bridge, back down and to a bus, the 104, the one we were supposed to take the opposite direction in the first place. It was cool though.

We finally got back, got some supplies from a store nearby school, soap mostly. Then we went back, sat down, feet sore and backs sore. I turned on the TV and watched a movie that reminded me of the movie we watched in Chinese class, "Yi ge dou bu neng shao". I watched it to the end, it was nice.

Then, Tammy and I looked at my Lonely Planet book to find a place to go over the weekend, we couldn't really find anything. Any suggestions? We were thinking like Qingdao, or somewhere in Hebei. It was quite fun, but I was tired. BUT I STAYED AWAKE a little longer.

I took a shower, which was nice, brushed my teeth and then pretty much knocked out. I woke up at 830 this morning naturally. Oh BoY! I went with Tammy for a nice walk down the street to get breakfast, which we ordered this Black Pepper Beef, just like at Yummy in Oakland Chinatown. It was good. And again, I got a Sprite/Coke, I always get one because the water sucks. Dammit. Anyway, after that we walked more and looked at nice stores, walked into a cellphone place, a couple bakeries, which we ended up buying some snacks from, then some clothing stores. It was a nice walk, considering that the weather was nice and there wasn't really anything annoying, besides the normal smells and the crazy drivers, one of which who almost ran over us and scared the crap out of us.

Anyway, when we got back I wanted to call home to see if the phone was working or whatever. I called my mom and we talked about the phone, it works it they call my regular number, as if I was still in the US. Weird! I hope that it doesn't cost us anything, but they say that there were no charges and they saw calls. They said whatever I'm using here works, but then when people call my SIM card, it doesn't work. I talked to my mom for a bit and then I talked to my brother, who talked forever, like he always does. HAHA, ohh Greg. He sounds like he's having a lot of fun. We're waiting in this cafe, using the internet, waiting to go to the orientation and after dinner, we are going to go to Wangfujing. YES! I loved it the first time I went, so many good snacks, like scorpions. Mmm. As long as it's cooked, I'm cool with it.

Anyway, I think I'm fully updated now.

Oh yeah, my mom is going to sell my Acura tomorrow. Bye bye car :(.