This morning, Sarah and I went down to the playground by our hotel to explore. It was strange, the play sets were all playground versions of workout equipment. It was cool to play on, but it made me wonder if China really was all work and no play. We also found a great store near the end of the street that our hotel is on that sells ice cold bottled water for 1 Yuan. That’s really cheap—15 cents in American money. Not to mention, none of the drinks here are refrigerated, in fact, I feel that at some points, the drinks are actually heated. It’s kind of gross and doesn’t really quench anyone’s thirst.
Later on, we all visited Tian’man Square. It was really funny, all of the Chinese tourists at the sight were taking pictures of us, and it really felt like we were celebrities. There were also a whole slew of Chinese people trying to sell things to us American tourists, and their main product was the infamous Mao Watch. It got pretty annoying after a while, and I felt really bad for having to ignore them at first because they look like they needed the money, but I honed in on my “ignore the annoying people shoving crap in my face” skills that I so seamlessly learned from my frequent passages through Towers lobby at Pitt.
Afterwards, we decided to try and eat at a Haagen – Dazs. It proved to be more difficult than we had initially thought, due to it being a sit-down style cremerie with waitresses and menus. There was a language barrier, for sure, and the waitress had a miscommunication with us, seeing as she walked away with all of our money and not giving us our change until we finally got a hold of her. It was a very interesting day, and as of now, the jet lag hasn’t caught up with me… yet.