Friday! I was up this morning at 640 and talked to Will and Madre before heading out to meet Yulan at the West gate. I had my standard peach and yogurt for breakfast. Yulan was the normal 5 minutes late and then we set off. I got on the first doubledecker bus that I had ever been on and we headed off to Peking U. The bus drivers stop and start very quickly, and everything is jerked around a lot on the buses. We got to the University and ended up walking quite a ways because we had gotten off on the wrong stop (even though Yulan was told that it was the right stop). We got into the University and asked directions from a guy walking up some stairs into a building, He took us through a maze of hallways to the wrong place! When we asked the custodial worker, she managed to get us to the right place. We got there a little early, so Yulan and I sat and visited. She asked if I loved America. I said "yes". She then started talking about writing assignments in her Chinese elementary school and that one of the assignments was to basically write a love poem to China. They were taught from a very early age to love China. I told her that in America we are not necessarily taught to love our country in school (though we should be). But we are taught to be thinkers and questioners (hopefully). She also did not get the quote "The principle of free government adheres to American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains" although that may have been due to language translation. But she has also never experienced a free government. I also tried to explain to her freedom of the press which I don't think she got either.
The lecture started 10 minutes late. It was in Chinese though...I had been told it was to be in English. I was the only American in the entire room. And my name was the only one in "alphabet" on the list while all the others were in Chinese characters. This meant that I was the first on the list. I sat there and watched/played solitaire on my phone. I was definitely bummed that there was not a translator.
After that we headed back. I stopped and pick up my hard drive, and Yulan transferred some photos for me. We looked at the photos of Beaker (my pet turkey) and me. It was rather fun. I watered plants and packaged filled petri dishes to put in the fridge this morning. We went out to the other building to water the plants in it, but the lock would not open. The tumblers would not catch. I accidentally broke the lock trying to pull the key out (oops).
Lunch today consisted of some lotus root, celery and meat. Not bad. Lili told me that Dr. Cheng was getting me a gift to take back to America and that she needed my opinion on what to get. So this afternoon I get to pick out Chinese prints of characters to be taken back with me. I found another water well sign (small metal markers with Chinese characters; I think they pop off of their locations as I have found them on the ground). This brings my count up to four on those. I might be going to see the Scotts tonight. (My friends from the States are here. Mrs. Scott's dad lives in Beijing)
Back to work at 200 - did nothing this afternoon as Yulan was somewhere else. I talked to Faith about donuts, kolaches, pies, tarts, cinnamon rolls and other foods before I went through the photos on my phone with her. I played some solitaire and Faith said she thinks that the beard looks "A-Okay". It was a very uneventful afternoon. I do not think that Faith has ever had a good fresh donut before. The ones she showed me that she had eaten all came prepackaged (yucky).
The Scotts are going to meet me at the west gate at 530. Can't wait to see them - it should be fun.
I met the up with Rachel and Mrs. Scott. We went the the Sesh Wan restaurant as I was very hungry. I ate some fried rice while they told me plans for tomorrow. Rachel was in Morocco for 6 weeks before coming here. While walking over to the place, we ran into Albert and said "howdy" to him. His soil samples are taking forever to weigh in as they need one gram each. Once dinner was finished, we decide to go to the Olympic Green station to see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. The Cube was under renovation but it was still lit up, and the Bird's Nest was very cool. All around the park there were very interesting models of dinosaurs. They really like "How to Train Your Dragon" in China - there were tons of posters and stuff and even a live action version of it. "Kind of like a Disney on ice," Rachel said. I bought some lasers from one of the street vendors. We bargained with the girl and got two of the large ones for 100 yuan which is a good deal. The lasers look like they are meant for American vendors based on the warning label. The park was pretty fanatastic. They had a wall with all of the names of the medalists on it for the Olympic and para-Olympic games. We got to see the Water Cube light up - it was a blue glowing cube just like you see in the photos. It was very cool.
We had taken the subway to the green, but we took the bus back to Mrs. Scott's parents' house. It was only about 1 km away from the park, and you could see the Bird's Nest from the window. They live on the 12th floor of a large apartment complex and their "home" was absolutely beautiful. They had some exquisite pieces of jade work and ceramics. When you went into their house, you took off you shoes and put on slippers. They made some more food and I had kind of a second dinner while the Scotts had their first dinner. There was a sweet sticky rice dish and some soup with some fishes and sweet potatoes. After that course, we moved on to the meat, flour, and carrot burger patties. That is the only way that I know how to describe them. They were awesome, but I have no idea what the actual name of them is supposed to be. It was about 1015 and I needed to go in order to get back to the dorm before they lock it up for the night (with the customary bike lock) and also before the subway closed. I got onto line 15 which was above ground and then transferred to line 10. On the line 10, I did some pull-ups on the train. I got off of line 10 at the right spot to find that I had missed the last train that was heading to Weigongcun. I headed to the surface and managed to find a guy that could point to the direction of Renmin University. This was good. I kept calm in the situation and figured out what I needed to do. This made all of the difference. I ran along the road until I got into the areas I was familiar with and got back to the dorm without incident. It was about a kilometer and half that I ran back to the dorm, in flip flops. But I made it before the gates were closed. Thank the Lord!
On the subway the recording that they have announcing stations says ghetto for get off, and right for left, left for right. when they made the tape they got it reversed. oops
The dorm was open as well as the store so I bought my last watermelon and headed up to my room - just in time to intercept my Moo call. I talked to her for a short time, and now that I am ready to head to bed,there is some heavy machinery operating outside and below my window. It is very annoying.
Signing off on my last Friday in Beijing. Good night and God bless.
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