Super8 Hotel Beijing Ao Shi

... and someone scanned our foreheads to take our temperatures before they would let us into the building!

The entrance to 3e International School is gated and we had to be let through the gates and have our temperature taken with a forehead scanner. I suppose that they would not let anyone through who might be experiencing flu symptoms. It was a first; however, we did pass through an area of the airport, when we arrived, where temperature was monitored as well ...

... microscopic cages. It was slightly sickening to see, this is probably the tactic to make silly tourists feel pity and buy some. At the Silk Market...oh my... The vendors pull your clothes, speak to you in your own tongue and yell all the time. 5-6 floors of hell, you're very welcome. It had to cling on to Jannie and close my eyes as not to hit or yell back to someone. pheeew.. Last stop for the day was Cultural Street, a traditional shopping ...

... us again, even though we were behind a giant concrete pillar. By this time, Scott and Thomas had shown up, so we struggled to convey that we were now a party of four instead of two. Then I realized that this was within my meager abilities, so I said, women you liang ge pengyou, or we have two friends. What a genius I am! After that, the driver was really into seeing which words I knew, like when we stopped to buy drinks before the trip. I bought shui and kekoukele, water and coca ...

... for a fruity frozen umbrella type drink. Wit and I found a \fresh corn juice' on the Menu and it turned out to be fresh squeezed warm corn!!! Tasted just like drinking creamed corn - rather filling and might be good with toast to dip???? Catherine, an old friend and previous colleague of Wit and Sam's joined up for dinner and we had a great Geo political discussion. It is beyond my ability to comprehend the changes one generation ...

... I went out with a couple of my friends and got Hot Pot. It was really good other than the fact that i burned the tip of my tongue. Sunday I woke up and started to do my homework. A lot of the work that i have to do was stuff that i missed while i was sick in the hospital. I was studying all day except for when I stopped to talk to Chris for a couple hours. Well I'm off to get dinner and study some more because I am still playing catch up.

... with scrub brushes all over the square, scrubbing away at the cobblestones. My camera battery has died, so I won't get any of the pics, rats. Jersey Bob had better have some good ones on the Snapfish sight so I can steal some.... We all pause and line up for a group photo op. A photographer comes and takes a pro shot to put into a souvenir book for us, which we can each person for the bargain price of just 100 yuans ...

... t want to rifle through her underwear bag though......phew! But they did check her books out by reading the pages etc etc. So it was a tense ish time, but they obviously were doing their job and doing it well. Eventually they moved on after asking Neske to sign a piece of paper, it was all in chinese so she had no idea what she was signing we just assumed that it was to say they had checked her bags. It was the same story for other people on the ...

... We smelled and tasted these four with impressive kung-fu-style moves to pour it from the glass to the cup (too hard to explain). Although they were all excellent, my favourite was the fruit tea. The final and best part of the tour was visiting a kindergarten. When the guide mentioned this, our hearts melted and our eyes shone: we could take 100 more pictures of cute Chinese children! I couldn't believe my luck. I don ...

... and i wouldn't pay more than 10 yuan. she hated it and i yelled at her for about 3 minutes while she continuously lowered the price down to 10. i think she was scared because i was starting to draw a crowd from yelling so loud, haha. i ended up buying two of those things and a bunch of other stuff for about 1/10th of their original prices, haha. one guy i bargained with started whining too me 'come on, can't you raise the price any more?' 'nope... i ...

I'm still in Beijing eating my way through the city. I think one more night here and I'll be taking an overnight train to Pingyao about 9 hours south of here. That is if I can navigate my way through the nightmare of booking train tickets in China. I've heard form several people that it's difficult at the best of times but we'll just have to see about that. I finally made it out to the great wall. It just so happened that the day I had scheduled to go ...