轻点点 (Softer)

A McDonald’s Delivery Guy

Me at the Temple of Heaven

A band playing western songs on traditional chinese instruments

The Temple of Heaven

Me at the temple of Heaven

Me at the temple of heaven

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor (My Favourite)

People dancing in the temple of heaven park

Hey, so Today I went and got a massage for the first time. I went to a place that specialized in massages given by blind people. It was a lot of fun and pretty cheap (60 kuai) with our student discount. Though, it was a deep tissue massage so they were pretty intense. Luckily I went with a chinese friend who taught me 轻点点 (qing(1)dian(3)dian(3)) which means softer. I made the mistake of telling the masseuse that my legs hurts so he would do my legs and he tore into them. I thought he was going to rip them off. I felt really good afterwards though. Later on in the day I went out to get dumplings on a street that has a lot of street food and little restaurants…I had the most amazing meat that I have had here from a little stand with a grill. It was chicken skin and the sauce he put on it was amazing. I had a plate of dumplings too but the vinegar in the restaurant wasn’t that good so I was slightly disappointed. Afterwards, I went with some friends to a different spot on the street to go get this shaved ice stuff and we ended up talking with the street vendors for an hour. It was a lot of fun. They were all really nice and we ended up getting free ice cream from them. They told us to come back again tomorrow though if I go there every day it would not be good for my weight. After that we went home and bought some fruit from the people who sell it on the street corner near the dorm. We ended up talking with them for a while too. The outing took a long time but it was a lot of good chinese practice and we made a lot of friends.

This past weekend was a lot of fun as well. On Friday night I saw Harry Potter with a  bunch of people form EAP and someone’s tutor who is really nice. The movie was in English with chinese subtitles so I was able to understand it all luckily. On saturday we went out to a club near our dorm called Propaganda (中文: 五星）.

On Saturday I went to the Temple of Heaven (天坛）with some people. It was a lot of fun. At one of the gift shops they had a place where you could take pictures in traditional imperial clothing so I took a few in the yellow Imperial robes and the imperial hat. They also had a huge set with a throne and two different backgrounds that you could be by so it was a lot of fun I have posted a few pictures with the blog. I was very popular with the locals during the whole thing. When I was getting dressed and posed a whole bunch of chinese people were taking pictures of me and apparently one person was video taping me. Maybe it was also because I was making silly poses in between the actual pictures the guy was taking.

We met up with the same tutor who went to the Harry Potter movie with us there and apparently she goes to the club every week so they gave her VIP cards which meant she got us all in for free. It was good because otherwise the cover would have been 100 kuai. The club was pretty good and we ended up in the bar on the top floor at 3am. While we were sitting around a table a random asian girl came up and took a picture with one person from our group and then ran back to her table. We sent one of the native chinese speakers from out group to go talk to them and find out if they wanted a picture with us. Apparently they were playing truth or dare so we went over and dared them to talk to us. We ended up talking with them for an hour and a half. They were koreans who were studying in Beijing and had been here for 4 years apparently. They all spoke really good chinese so we were practicing with them. One of them spoke English but the others didn’t so it was good chinese practice. We got their phone numbers and we are going to try to hang out with them soon so we can practice our Chinese more . I also asked one of the korean girls in the program to teach me a few phrases in Korean since they seemed to find it amusing that I knew how to say hello and goodbye in korean.

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