China - Day 3

Today was a pretty light day. We did not do anything touristy, we basically just went to Church in the morning, than we went to lunch, a little dessert of ice cream, and then I went, along with my dad and our host family, to Sam's club.

I'm going to say this right now, it is 11pm right now, and I sort of want to go to bed...so I'm going to leave out virtually all details, because, frankly, there are no interesting ones...

Beginning with church, nothing real exciting happened. We went to a church for foreigners. You have to have a non Chinese passport, or form of ID to get in because Chinese nationals are not allowed by the government to attend the service. That is one of the things about China, you don't have the same freedom as a citizen when compared to Americans. Really, the things that we are allowed to do in America are just amazing when compared to the Chinese. Looking beyond that though, the service was not amazing. I'm not saying it was a horrible service or anything, by no means. I just did not feel that we were one church. I don't really know how to say that. I used to think that when some one said they could feel the church was together and one, that they really did not feel that. But know, here in this church, I sort of understood what that means. It might have to do with the fact that these Christians are coming from all over the place. Not just from different cities, but these are international guests. In any case, I just did not really feel right... I don't know what else to say on that, so I'm just going to move on.

Lunch was like our other Chinese meals. There were many different dishes of stuff, and I ate something from all of them...food is good. We had some ice cream for dessert. Ice cream, along with pizza and ice water, is something that is not consumed much, and is therefore pretty expensive. It was good though... You might be thinking, "water? water is not consumed much in China?" Well, water is, it is in all the tea that they serve, but not cold water. All the water that comes from the tap, like in Taiwan, is just full of bacteria and stuff that you don't want inside of you, so it all has to be boiled. Because of that, I have not had a glass of real "ice water" in a restaurant since first setting foot in Asia. I never thought I would not get ice water served in a restaurant, but here, the water is served like a fine wine, you get a mini portion.

So, then we went shopping for food. Uhh, nothing much exciting, it was kinda funny though. The two older guys, along with two dads and one mom, went shopping, while the girls and another mom went home...how weird is that? Now that I think about it, it might not have been Sam's club...I know it was some sort of Costco like place, but I don't know. Anyway, it was pretty similar to any warehouse type store in America. The amounts of each item were not really Costco type, more department store size, but that is just to keep the price reasonable I'll bet. Also, Costco does not have two big stands devoted to selling sea food. There were all kinds of things there. Huge fish, small fish, live crab, lobster, fish, the people we were with said that at one point they even had some alligator for sale, yum! We got a cake for Katherine, and so we came home and ate that. It was really good, it was one of the Chinese bakery fruit cake things. You've got the cake pieces, and in between, you have fruit, I think it was pineapple, and the entire thing is covered in some sort of whipped cream.

So, that was our day. I didn't take the camera anywhere, but to keep some pictures going in this post, I'm going to post some from yesterday...not the same ones of course. Again, I have no idea what is going on tomorrow, but I think it might include shopping of some sort, depending on whether stores are open (Chinese national holiday for this week).
-Aaron


Looking down the road from where we are staying. This is a gated community, so it is pretty nice.

From Great Wall

From Great Wall

The view from the wall was just awesome. I guess you could never stop admiring God's creation, especially not this landscape.

From Great Wall

One more of the wall. I'm trying to get a "postcard" picture here.

From Great Wall

On the Beijing University campus again, this is the concrete pagoda I think.

From Great Wall

Some more of that popping the balloon thing. To answer some questions in the last post comments. I got up there by volunteering. We were with our host family, and they told me to raise my hand, I did. How did I understand? Watching, mostly. As for how this "trick" is performed, it is not a trick. The guy throws the little needle thing (which my brother got to keep, after our friend found it on stage after the show) and that hits the glass. The needle does not actually go through the glass (I think some can get it too though) but the glass gets a hole where impacted, and shards fly out the other side popping the ballon.

From Great Wall

From Great Wall

The tea pourer

From Great Wall

Yep, it is going in the cup there, I know it is hard to see on the ground there.

From Great Wall