Adventures at Olympic Park and the Great Wall

6/26-6/28

Two days ago after work we headed back to the hotel and Janet wanted to take a little rest, but I was 

My New Foreign Friends

craving some milk tea, so I ventured out on my own. It was raining so I had to rent an umbrella from the hotel and then headed into the mall that was next door. It was pretty empty but I jut walked around for a bit, more like a half an hour, until I finally found a milk tea stand. The girl spoke English too! It was, of course, delicious. I met up with Janet and we walked around for a bit outside until it started raining too hard so we ducked into a restaurant close to our hotel. After we stuffed our faces with spicy beef noodles we decided to walk it off and go to Olympic park down the street. It was fantastic and so neat to go check out. At the sign a family, maybe from Tibet, wanted to take their picture with me, it was nice because it reminded me of India!! Janet said she had never seen that before and I told her it was basically second nature for me, which is totally true. Anyways, we explored a bit, got our photos taken in front of all the major buildings, and then headed back to the hotel for some dessert. Turns out the hotel didn't have anything sweet, so we ventured out yet again to go find some. We came across a little bakery and we got our fix and then we turned in for the night.

So bright and early yesterday we got up to head to the Great Wall!! It took about an hour and a half to get there, about twenty minutes from the entrance of the wall we started seeing glimpses of it near the

The Birds Nest

road. I was really cool because when I first saw it the Team Maine song from this year was playing (the new Macklemore song), it was fate that I was there. We got out and realized it was going to be scorching hot, especially because we had escaped the smog and it was actually sunny. I had worn shorts, a fancy tank top and a three quarter length cardigan as well as sneakers, so I wasn't too worried, although I had the sinking feeling that I would be leaving there with a wicked sunburn.

We headed up the wall, starting to our left while most everyone else went right, and began the climb. I knew it would be a touch hike, but I didn't realize how tough. At times we were basically climbing vertically, which was even more tough on the way back. We walked for about two hours to the right, then turned around and while Kevin stayed at the bottom Janet and I hiked the left side for about another two hours. It was exhausting, but after a couple hours my legs went pretty numb so I couldn't really feel how badly it hurt. It was so worth it, though, it was gorgeous. Although it was super crowded it was amazing just to be on the wall. We headed out after eating a pretty crappy meal at around one, and made it back to the city around three. I had to pee like nobody's business but we still

had to get in a cab and go to the market (we decided to kill the rest of our time shopping), and that took another hour and a half.

We got to the market and got the rest of our souvenir shopping done. I made a few great deals and the shop keepers didn't really like me after they realized I wouldn't get ripped off. Oh well though, I had fun! Janet and I went to get our nails done, which was so nice, and attempted to talk with the girls there, although it was a l it of laughing because we really couldn't understand them at all and they couldn't understand us either! After that we headed back to a shop to make one last deal and then went to the sixth floor for some dinner. We went to a restaurant where you had to mark down which meals you wanted, but it was all in Mandarin characters so we just called over a waitress and she helped us out. The meal in general wasn't great, but we got fried dumplings which were beyond delicious. After we headed out and only got slightly ripped off by the cab driver. Almost as soon as I got back to my room (around 10 o'clock) I crashed. So this morning I was still dead asleep when my alarm woke up and I bolted awake, unlike my usual groggy wake up. The adrenaline rush was nice though, because without it I would have been totally unmotivated to get out of bed.

Kevin decided that since tomorrow I am on my own he needed to test me to see if I could get a taxi on my own and get us to work. He had the addresses all written down so all I had to do was ask the front

The Water Cube

desk to get a cab for me and then show the driver the address. It was a piece of cake and although I couldn't remember what the building looked like (because the only other time I've been here was the first day when I was half asleep), but here we are safe and sound! I'm here tomorrow too, apparently, and have to get here on my own. It should go well, knock on wood. Janet is going to Shanghai for the weekend for a fair and then she leaves for the states on Monday, which is sad. I'm trying to get in contact with Sophie, the girl from England, because I am going to need someone to hang out with when Janet leaves, but so far she hasn't texted me back. I'll figure it out. I mean, I can always just go kill time in a market, or in a park, I'd rather have a friend to spend time with but I can manage on my own.

So again, I have no WiFi, so I guess I will just ramble on again about China. One thing I find pretty funny is everyone has seat covers for their car. And fancy one too! Also, everyone has something hanging from their rear view mirror, which it totally my style. I bout a good luck one to hang in my car, it has an elephant on it and a bell, I'm pretty stoked to put it in there.

No one braids their hair here either, which is a bummer for me because that's always a go-to hair style for me. It might be because everyone's hair is so fine here it won't stay in a braid, but luckily a few people wear it in ponytails so I mainly do that or a bun. It's too hot and humid to wear it down.

It's so strange being in an eastern country where no one stares at me. It's really, really nice and quite refreshing, but so strange. I'm used to getting the strangest looks because the whole time I was in India people stared at me no matter where I went. Blatantly stared. It's nice to walk down the street and not feel the pressure of having everyone's eyes on you and know that they are talking about you.

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We just got back from lunch, we went to a Thai place, and we had a couple curries that tasted like they were directly from India. I couldn't eat one, it reminded me of a curry that made me sick in India, but

About to Eat the Duck Face

the other was good and so was a sampler platter we got. I realized that I should never wear white, no matter how hard I try to keep clean it just doesn't happen. I totally ruined my new outfit, both the pants and the shirt, and I'm hoping the stains will come out if I wait to wash them until tomorrow.

Fanny packs are also socially acceptable to wear here, especially for men. I dig it. Gotta love the fanny pack.

I've accepted that Mandarin is basically impossible to learn. I've been trying to practice and have literally gotten nowhere. I learned to count two days ago and today can barely remember any of it. Oh well, I mean, I only have a week and a half left here so sits not really a big deal, but it would be cool to at least come back knowing a bit of Mandarin.

My new flats make my feet sweat. A lot.

There's a lady here at the office who is wearing a cat shirt. I want to take a photo of it to show Casey, but I feel like that would be super obvious because the people she is talking to are facing me. Maybe I can be sneaky and get one later. It's actually a pretty cool shirt.

I have almost run out of money, shocker, and still feel the itch to go shopping. I have enough gifts for everyone back home, as well as plenty for myself, but I do love love love to shop, and being in a foreign country just make as me want to more. I'm going to resist though, I only have about 200RMB left, which is only about $30 or so, so I will resist unless I see something that I really can't live without. I have gone chopstick cray cray here, I have about thirty pairs and although I really want to keep most of them, I will give them away to people who will appreciate them and use them more than I will. Yesterday I bought two sets of if be when I actually only needed one for my family just because I struck a good deal with the lady. Guess our apartment now has a few new sets of

sticks!

I need to have Jacky teach me how to cook. I've been taking photos of everything I eat so I'm hoping that if I show him he will recognize the dish and teach me how to make it. Aka I hope he makes it for me because although I am an excellent cook, he is way better. I do need to make him a couple dinners, though, because he has been a gem to me, patiently waiting for me to figure out my work hours, taking my sass and my bad attitudes, helping me move, and also lending me his iPad. Maybe I'll attempt to make him a Chinese dish, it might be funny for him to watch me struggle.

I really like it here, I'm so torn because I love being home so much and whenever I am abroad I miss

Orono too much, but I could definitely see myself living here, maybe for a year or two, especially if I get some Mandarin under my belt. It is not hard to be here at all; the food is great, the people are patient, the cities are modern, and the cell phone I have actually works almost everywhere I go. Also, the shopping is fantastic. The only problem is I would weigh about five hundred pounds if I did live here because the food is so good. Also, it's a bit humid here for my liking, and the sanity of my hair, but other than that and not understanding everyone I really, really, realllllly like it here. I am excited to go home though, summertime in Orono is like no other. I'll have a week when I get back, then I'll be in Cali for a week, and then back to Orono until school starts. That really only gives me three weekends of summer because I'm hoping to start my new job the second week of August. Oh the woes of being a semi-adult. No bother, I'll make the most of my free time there.

One funny thing about the people here is when someone starts to talk to Janet or myself and we say that we do not speak Mandarin, and they clearly do not speak English, they keep talking to us like if they

say it in a different way in Mandarin that we will understand them. It is pretty funny, especially when it really isn't important for us to understand each other. When I think about it I guess I do that same thing, saying it in different ways, and slower, even though it is a lost cause. Quite the show for onlookers I would imagine.

It is so strange to me that everyone here tries to make their skin as white as possible, while everyone back home wants to be as dark as they can. I guess the grass really is always greener on the other side. I am completely the same way, being tan make as me feel good and way more confident. I tried really hard to stay out of the sun before I came here, which is good because lighter skin is "better" here, but I am itching to get my swim suit on and go lounge at the pool. Actually, that's probably what I am going to do all day when I get home, and I can't wait.

I also can't wait to wear my new dress to work. I have I shave my legs before I do that, though. For those of you who know me I dispose shaving my legs, I think it's an absolute pain in the butt and I really don't have anyone to impress, so I don't do it unless I need to, but here I feel the need because everyone is so nice looking I feel like I should do my best to fit in. Maybe I'll get that done to night so I can wear it tomorrow. Probably not, though. Maybe Saturday, I have an event that day and I usually like to get a bit more fancy for them than I do for just sitting in the office. I do need to invest in a few pairs of tights, though, both black and nude. That would actually support my not shaving habit too, covering my legs perfectly! What a lovely plan.

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So Kevin took us to a traditional roasted duck restaurant after work and it was fan-flippin-tastic. Seriously, the duck there was amazing. It came out of a cart, a man cut it into tiny slivers, and we dipped it in this syrup-ie soy sauce, put it on this think Chinese tortilla thing and put a few pieces of scallions and cucumber on it, rolled it up and ate it. Seriously perfection. I also ate a duck head. Yah, even the brains. It was actually super delicious, although the tongue was a bit more tough than I expected, I hitch almost threw me for a loop, but it tasted too good to really bother me. After stuffing ourselves full of duck, stir fry chicken and peanuts, pea pods and local beer we headed across the street to a little outdoor barbecue place and ate and drank even more. We spent the rest of our evening talking about everything under the sun, from our universities, our friends, our family, traditions, weddings, where we lived, literally everything. I was so nice to just hang out outside and chat. It wasn't too hot

either because the sun was down, although I was still dripping sweat. Janet and I headed back around 10 and then sat outside our hotel talking about even more things, mostly about our friends, until we were so tired we just went in and crashed.

So Janet and Kevin left this morning before 7 and I got to at least sleep in until 8, but then I began the long trudge of a day. I managed to finally get a taxi from the hotel (everyone kept stealing mine so I had to keep going back inside for them to call me another one) and made it to work only an hour late. I lugged all my crap upstairs with the help from one of the StudyGroup counselors assigned to me that day to help me out be cases Kevin wasn't there, dropped my bags off behind the office counter, and settled into the second Hunger Games book. Thank god I have a Kindle, it is literally attached to me at all times. I always forget how much I love to read, but this trip has certainly been a fantastic opportunity to get caught up on some of the books I've been meaning to read for a while! So other than a few counselors coming over to talk to me (I think out of pity mostly), no one bothered to really even look my way. I do think I convinced one counselor to at least consider UMaine for her MBA, because we honestly do have a fantastic program, and I really do know how to sell UMaine. I got to leave at 4, which worked out perfectly because I finished my book at around 350 and had a solid ten minutes to just let the ending sink in before I packed up to go. Wilson (the counselor assigned to help me out) helped me with my bags and hailed me a cab. It wasn't the normal orange and yellow cab, though, it was black, which made me kind of nervous, but it had a meter that could print recipes, and Wilson lives her, so I got in and made sure the cab driver knew I wanted a fapiao (receipt), and then settled in for the ride. It was only supposed to take maybe fourth minutes, but it ended up taking two hours. I had told Sophie I would meet her at 6 for dinner, so I only had a couple minutes to freshen up before I was out the door again. I took her to a restaurant right down the street from my hotel, it is highly recommended by the locals and I had been there (the first night in Beijing), and she had also said someone had told her to go there, so we enjoyed a lovely meal together. Turns out that she doesn't eat meat, only fish, so we only ordered one meat dish which I ended up not even liking. The rest was fantastic, though, especially the spinach with peanut sauce. We got this veggie platter and it came with a cup of what we assumed to be salt, but it turns out it was sugar, which was super disappointing. Everything really was good, though. We stayed for about three hours and talked and talked and talked. It was so nice, she is very easy to talk to and we have a ton in common. We mostly talked about why the heck we were there, we both feel pretty lost and useless and like we are not really helping anyone, but it is a great experience for us regardless. We also talked about our schools, but way more the social scene rather than the school itself. We talked about the laws, especially how the drinking

age is 21 in the US and she didn't understand how that worked for college kids. We exchanged some stories and laughed a lot and discovered that we basically gave the same schedule for the rest of our time here, so we decided that we were going to team up. She spends a lot of her time in her hotel while I am out and about way more. This is her first time traveling alone outside of Europe, so I think I am going to encourage her to come out with me whenever I go so she can see that the east is actually really amazing. I mean, there are definitely things you have to be careful of, but it has the potential to be so fantastic I wouldn't want her to miss out on that. I am also realizing that I am super fortunate to have Kevin as my partner on this trip, apparently Sophie's mentor person literally just tells her to go somewhere without any direction or guidance, while Kevin is basically my glorified babysitter and big brother. I feel like I have a solid basis of how the city works because of him, so I am going to try to share what I know with her tomorrow at the college fair. No one will really talk to us I am sure so we will have plenty of time to chat. Anyways, I am only own again tomorrow and now have Sophie to travel around with which is nice, and Kevin will be back with me on Sunday. I'm headed home in a little over a week but I can't believe how fast this trip is going!! I'm excited to be going back to summertime in Orono, but I like it here so much I will be very sad to see it go. I need to come back here, it's not even an option at this point. I will defiantly be keeping my eyes open for internship opportunities here in the future.

Today, my life is just Shelby.