By Small and Little Things...

There have been many small events that have happened that I don’t think I can say enough about them to fill a single Blog.  That being said, this post might be one of the longer ones, seeing as there have been so many of these small and little events.  By small and little things brings a complete and enjoyable experience.

Beijing Zoo

Granted this was not a small thing, just didnt have much to say about it other than this.  The Beijing Zoo was nothing like I expected it to be.  It was a massive park, with most of the animals in cages or pens that were often too small for the animal.  Those animals that had a large enough pen weren’t active enough to actually use it.  The most interesting part of the Beijing Zoo was the monkeys.  I think I could have watched those things all day long. Across the street is a mall. Things are sold for pretty cheap, and you don’t even have to bargain for it.  I ended up buying one of my favorite shirts here that is about the 2008 Olympics.

Hot Pot(ting)

When we had gone to the Silk Market and Brother Galer said we had the rest of the night to do whatever we pleased, Brandon, Lauren, Seth and Meredith, and I went out with Brandon’s friend Ivy for Hot Pot.  This was probably the best experience we that far into the trip.  The food was delicious and was cooked in a very simple way.  You have broth boiling and all you do is throw meat, vegetables, noodles, jiaozi or anything else you can think of that would be delicious (and some things that aren’t I.E. coagulated duck blood) into the soup to cook it.  Of course you do this one item or a few at a time.  If you throw it all in at once, all you have is a soup and loose the Hot Pot experience, trust me, not as fun. Ivy ended up paying for us, which was very kind of her because it was the first time she had met everyone but Brandon, but that’s just Chinese Tradition.  The next time we could pay for her she said. This is one reason why I love China, it is very courteous.

Mosque

One of friends here is from Iraq.  One day when we were talking to him, we mentioned that it would be interesting to go see a mosque.  So one day after classes we made the trip over to the Mosque, which was one if not the oldest Mosque in Beijing.  It was a very interesting place.  It had the feel of a traditional Chinese village, like the ones you see in Mulan, but you could see Arabic writing everywhere. Apparently a large portion of China is Muslim so these mosques get used quite frequently.

Night Market

The Night Market is where all the weird food is at.  Starfish, scorpions in which are still alive on a stick, sharks, tarantulas, beetles, snakes, centipedes, lizards, and all manner of things that you could think of lined the street ready to be fried up for your enjoyment (or not).  I didn’t dare try any of these things since I’m not into eating something just for the experience.  I’m pretty sure I would have thrown up had I had any of those things. Just outside of the market was the main street that looked a lot like a Chinese Times Square with all the lights.  It was a very nice night to be out as well.  Definitely was a perfect end to a perfect night.

Carrefour

Carrefour is a huge grocery store that I would compare to a Meijer, or a Super Wal-Mart (even though they do have Wal-Mart, called Wu-Mart or Wu-Mei in Chinese, this was much more like it that Wu-Mei is).  We have gone to this place multiple times to look around, buy a Christmas tree, and well, let’s be honest the most notable thing there is the message chairs.  I could spend hours sitting in those chairs messaging my back loose from the hard bed that we sleep on.

Greek Restaurant

There is a Greek restaurant, that is fairly expensive in China standards (about 80kuai, $13), that is exceptional.  We go for the lunch buffet, and enjoy for the hours that it is open.  We definitely get our monies worth for this restaurant.  So far I have been there twice, once with Seth and Meredith (Meredith was one of my FHE sisters, and she is married to Seth.  They are great people and I love hanging out with them), and once with Abby, Tina, Josh, Seth and Meredith.  It was after this restaurant that I found the Rosetta Stones for so cheap.

Zi Zhu Yuan and Church

Zi Zhu Yuan is the park that is close of our dorm.  For the first few weeks of the study we would walk through this park to go to church.  This park is always lively. Many people come here to relax, but there is always something going on.  Women come here to learn how to dance, many different forms of dance from traditional Chinese that looks much like taichi, to a quick step.  Men come to practice taichi and martial arts.  There are exercise parks there, which look like a playground, but full of equipment for people to use to stretch out muscles, increase durability, and flexibility. Every Sunday there is a group that gathers together to learn how to sing.  Parks in China are a pretty big deal. ( the building there is where we have church.  its on the 4th floor of this building and is horrible because we pass a dairy queen to get to the elevators.  Just isnt fair!)

Crow’s Nest Pizza and Brett’s Birthday

This is quite possibly the best pizza that I have ever had.  This may be tainted by the fact that I have not had pizza from America, and that I’ve been deprived of most other things other than Chinese food for the past 3 months, but this pizza is seriously delicious.  I have been to this place 3 times, it is seriously that good.  Oh and did I mention that this pizza is huge? It costs about 140kuai ($25) but it is about 2 feet in diameter.  No kidding.  It comes with a variety of things on it like most places, but for some reason this just tastes a lot better.  They have white sauce, BBQ sauce, and marinara sauce pizzas so it is pretty legit.  The first time that I went there it was so good that we went the very next day.  Last month was Brett’s birthday. Brett is one of the guys from BYU-I and we decided to go to the Crow’s Nest.  It took us literally 2 hours to get inside and another hour to wait for our pizza.  It was well worth it though.  We had a birthday cake that his girlfriend, Gidianny, had purchased for him.  All of us ate a lot of food and when it came time to leave Adam, Josh and I had to book it to the subway to make it back to the school before they shut down the subway.  Overall it was a very good night.

Isaac, Food, Guns, and Zhen Ju’s

Ok so this one could probably do for its own blog post but we will see how it goes.  Isaac is one of the members here in Beijing.  He is originally from Arizona but learned how to speak Chinese to come over here for business.  Not really sure how old he is but I don’t think he is much older than 26.  He is a very accomplished man, and I will be honest, he has a lot of money.  Everyone dreams to be rich and if not, at least have a rich friend.  Well Isaac is that rich friend.  He is a very intense man to be around.  He is very knowledgeable about a variety of topics and has an opinion on just about everything.  Sometimes this gets on peoples nerves, but it is always interesting to be with him.  Isaac takes us around to do a ton of things, most of the time it involves food.  If I could give Isaac a catch phrase it would be “the party isn’t done until everyone has diabetes”.  You may think that this is funny, but in all seriousness, if there is one thing that China changes about me is that there is a chance I may come back with diabetes because of Isaac.  Now I’m more kidding about that, but in all honesty Isaac takes us out, we get food, and then more often than not, we will go get ice cream and whatever else you can think of.  One time we had gone to this noodle restaurant, had some amazing food, then left to get these cream puffs called Beard Papas. Each of us had 2 of them and they are about the size of a tennis ball.  After that, we did some exploring around the Forbidden City.  Finishing up with that, we decided to go to the Bellagio. In China the Bellagio is a fancy desert restaurant.  It has some pretty nice things, for example, shaved strawberry ice, shaved peanut ice, shaved chocolate ice, kiwi smoothie, crème brulee, and all sorts of other things. Isaac spends at least $100 on us every time that we go out.

One of those times was Adam Josh and I went out with Isaac and Joseph, a member here from Norway, to go shoot guns.  We got to shoot a Silenced Type 92 Pistol, a Russian AK47 and a Dragunov Sniper Rifle.  It was pretty legit.  It had been my first time at a shooting range and you know what? I am a pretty big fan.  I wouldn’t do it all the time, but it definitely changed my opinion of shooting.  I would never hunt but I wouldn’t mind going out and shooting clay pigeons or to a shooting range to shoot targets. After this all we went out to get some sushi.  This was the best sushi I have ever had and it made Josh like sushi (he was not a huge fan of it at all before this trip).  The total of this night cost us probably around $300? Maybe more, maybe less, but definitely was not cheap.  I am very grateful for all that Isaac does for us and being willing to share his success with us. Oh and did i mention that his driving is reminiscent of Fast and Furious or Live and Die Hard?  He is insane with that kind of stuff, but funny thing is that we  are pretty used to it now.

Another thing that we have gotten into is shooting Zhen Ju’s.  These are the little round tapioca balls that are at the bottom of some Asian drinks.  If you have been to Bubble Island in East Lansing you will know what I am talking about.  There is nothing quite as satisfying as driving along the side of the road and pegging pedestrians with these.  To see the reaction on their face is just priceless.  We have gotten pretty good at it as well.  My favorite part about is when people are wearing plastic vests.  You always know when you get them because the vest makes a very distinct popping noise on their vest.  This activity brings out a different side to people that you don’t see either.  Some of the girls are very into the game and find it hilarious.  Gidianny and Emily are very funny to watch when you get them shooting these things are people and cars. It definitely not very polite, but the fun of it seems to outweigh that in our minds. Now that is has gotten colder out he likes to take us to get Hot Chocolate and at the bottom of the hot chocolate is these Zhen Ju’s so this has been much more frequent.

The one thing that Isaac asks of us in return is that we do the same for someone else when we get older and have money of our own.  Take out people, show them a good time, and pay for them with no questions asked.  I hope to be able to do this one day.

Asian Santa

Yes, you did read that right.  On the 1^st of December Adam, Emily, Tina, Josh, Abby and I all went to a Christmas performance.  It was not too bad.  It was mainly these kids who sang some songs and the government officials over the Guo Mao area spoke.  They recorded it and there were a few dances, in which one we were pushed into the dance as well by one of the (later mentioned) Santa girls.  While we were there we got to meet the Asian Santa.  He is a lot skinnier and shorter if you can imagine.  He gave us all these light up red star wands.  Adam, Josh and I spotted these girls that were dressed up in Santa outfits, so us being men and them being cute girls, decided to take a picture of them.  Afterwards they gave Josh and Adam scarfs for asking.  The best part of the night was the free stuff for sure.  We got Santa hats, the wand and each of us got to take one of the ornaments from the barriers.  If there is three things that you can learn about China is “Ask and you shall receive”, “if at first you don’t succeed try, try again”, and “money speaks louder than words”, especially American money.  It ended up being a very good night.

Kieran’s Birthday

Kieran is one of the guys in my class and one of our good friends.  His birthday was during our National Week break.  After we went to Long Qing Xia, Jessica and I met up with members of our class and their friends from England to celebrate Kieran’s birthday.  We ate at this burger place in San Li Tun called the Blue Frog.  It is on the top floor overlooking the rest of the shopping complex.  It was a pretty good view.  After we ate I went to buy Kieran Glee season 1 and 2 and then met up with them at Cold Stone to get ready to leave.  I missed the ice cream but it was still a good night over all. 

Halloween and Movie Nights

For Halloween we had a movie night with hot chocolate.  Hot chocolate is not a luxury that we get to enjoy very often, mainly because chocolate, especially from other countries, tends to be pretty expensive in comparison the US.   Initially we wanted to watch Hocus Pocus, the best Halloween movie ever, just kidding (but seriously), however, we had to download it and it just wasn’t working very well.  So instead we watched the second part of Harry Potter 7.  That’s another thing about China.  DVDs come out way earlier.  Of course they aren’t real copies but they are pretty good.  Harry Potter was in theaters while we were here and you could get a pirated copy of it from Russia (in English but the subtitles and text is in Russian for Parsel tongue and title logo). In fact to illustrate how bad China is with pirating things, I went to see a Chinese movies 4 days after opening night, and when we came out, we were looking at the DVD guys merchandise, and we found the movie that we had just watched in with his collection.  Needless to say that movie nights have been a weekly, bi weekly, sometimes tri weekly tradition with how cheap movies are here.  You can get a movie for 5-12kuai ($.80-1.80) depending on the quality of the movie (Definitely a great idea to stock up on movies if you are ever in China especially if you are trying to learn Chinese since there is usually the option to change it into Chinese). I have always loved movie nights but I have come to really appreciate it here.

Joe’s Dinner

There is a Chinese member that we met by chance.  He had met a few of us playing soccer out on the field and asked about Scouting.  Some things led to another and he had told us that he was a member of the Church.  He had met the missionaries in France when he was studying there and got baptized.  Through sports he became friends with us and wanted to have dinner with us and one of his friends.  She also lived in France and happened to be a high school friend of his.  She had met the missionaries but I do not believe that she was baptized.  We had dinner and had a pretty enjoyable time as well, and keeping with Chinese traditions, they paid for us.  This would be the third example of being paid for in one blog, but now you can see how Chinese people think about guests.  The unwritten rule is that they pay for you, but the next time you pay.  Usually one person pays in the group and then next time another person and so on and so forth.  It definitely saves time splitting the check, or I guess if you really worry about it you could just split it afterwards, but again that is just how China is. 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was amazing.  We went over to the Branch Presidents house and it smelled so good.  Everyone was expected to bring something to help out and both Adam and I said we would bring water.  I had a 5 gallon jug that you generally see for office water coolers in my room for my personal drinking water, so I just empty it and we split the 12kuai (~$2) and lugged that thing pretty much all the way across the city by way of bus, subway and walking.  It was pretty straining on our backs but it was definitely appreciated by everyone. The food was great.  I have come to miss American food and I can’t wait to eat it on a regular basis.  Don’t get me wrong, I will miss eating Chinese food on a regular basis as well but having that variety is always nice.  The foo was just what I had been waiting for.  I love stuffing, and when I saw that there was homemade stuffing there I was so happy.  Mash Potatoes, Turkey, Candies Yams, the works.  I even found out that I like Cranberry sauce, though it might have been because it tasted like jam.  We had ordure’s first which was chips and vegetables, then the main course, and then we took a break before having dessert.  I had eaten 2 full plates of food plus probably what would have been another plate of chips and vegetables so I was pretty stuffed.  During the break we went down stairs and played games outside and in the library.  I decided to stay inside since I don’t have a coat and can’t afford one.  We ended up playing Scum or Presidents and a game to see who could eat M&Ms the fastest using chopsticks.  I believe the record was 14seconds set by one of the Asian members, but my record was 34 seconds.  It is pretty hard, not going to lie, especially with them being rounded, though I would bet that skittles would be worse.  After the dessert was set up and ready, we returned to their apartment and ate some more food.  They had pumpkin pie, chocolate pie, Oreo pie, cheese cake, fruit (fruit is very much a dessert thing here.  It’s very rare that you will find Chinese desserts here… it just isn’t something they excel at) and tons of other things.  We were all set to fall into a food coma after that.  Returning home we again decided to watch a movie and fell asleep nice and fed that night.  It was a great night.

Institute

Institute has become one of my favorite activities being here.  It is on Wednesday which is the longest day in for school (6 hours in which we dont get out until 3:20), and is on the other side of the city.  At institute we have our lesson and then the couple that teaches it provides a refreshment afterwards which usually ends up being chips and chili.  It takes us about an hour to get to the home where we have it and so in total we spend from about 6-11 every Wednesday for institute.  At the beginning of the semester I had said that i was not going to institute because it just took too long and it was on my longest day.  Now, after i went with Josh and Adam, i have only missed one for a class farewell party for Alessia.  All in all the sacrifice is worth it and i feel like Thursdays is my best day in class (not only because i only have 1 class, but i feel my Chinese is a lot better).

International Food Night

 Since there are so many people from different countries here we decided to have an international food night.  We invited some people from our classes and made broccoli casserole, Eggplant mozzarella lasagna, and French Mac n Cheese    We had a friend from France name Solange (sp?)  who made the mac n cheese, and it was the most delicious thing there (besides the melted mozzarella that melted all over the place and we had to use scissors to get it to not keep on stretching).  It was nice to have so many good friends in one place.  We went around and told each other what we were grateful for and after we finished eating Abby and i played around on the piano and sang Childrens Hymns.  It was a great night!

Isn’t it interesting how these little things would probably never be heard about unless there we pictures or by chance of remembrance, yet they add so much to a trip? I’m sure there are so many more things that I am missing like dinners with good friends in the Shack down the street, or getting food from off the street that has not been properly refrigerated or kept very sanitary. I have come to love all the little things that happen to us and I’m grateful for this experience. I love it.