Traveling Through the City . . .

On Saturday I went to the Summer Palace. By car, this is a 1.5 hour journey, by bus and subway it apparently takes 3 to 4 hours. . . But on the bright side, it only cost me 4 quai (50 cents) to get there instead of renting a car for 180 quai. We are staying in the South side of Beijing and the Palace is on the North side. We had a wonderful time, it was 3 Americans , 1 student and one Chinese Volunteer who is fluent in English. It was definitely an experience taking buses, transferring between different lines and using a subway. That would have been hard in America, this was one reason our journey took soo long ( and we may or may not have gotten on the subway going the wrong direction). We were gone for about 10 hours, and we were at the Summer Palace for 2 hrs . . . we also ate lunch. But, we really did have a good time – on the way there we just assumed that we would be getting there in the next 30 minutes, and then another 30 minutes, and then another. . . .
The Summer Palace is HUGE – it is where the Emperor used to spend his summers. And if you could build any summer house you could imagine, this is what you would build. The entire “Palace” would take over a day to walk through. It is basically a huge garden, complete with a lake, of course, and 20-30 buildings. All of the buildings are intricately painted and beautiful, of course. There are also rock gardens, and pathways (even the pathways are lain with intricate stone designs. This place must have taken years to build. Definitely somewhere that I would like to spend more time at, but I'm not really sure it is worth taking the journey again this month. . . . Next time I build a summer get away – I think I will copy the design.
Today was my first day teaching, my teacher who is mentoring me taught a little bit, but it was all my lesson plan! One down and 14 more to go . . . The day was very fun and went amazing. We were teaching them foods you find in a grocery store, mainly fruits and vegetables. So, in order to make it real for them, we went to the village of Friday and bought one of each. So today we passed them around and talked about their descriptions and then. . . cut them up and tasted them all! Yum-Yum (I have to admit this was my teacher's idea, she has done it before). Of course now that we have cooked cookies and eaten fruit/veggies I bet my students are expecting food all the time! LOL. When we went to the village to buy the produce, I rode a bike out all by myself! This made me feel quite accomplished – even though all I had to do was ride straight and not fall over. All the same, it was my first time being in the village alone. And I have to admit – walking through the village is one of my favorite things. Why? Well, If you ever need a confidence boost, or want to feel important – just come to China and take a walk through the village. Although this village is made of one bedroom “houses” and looks like a tiny place – it has 45,000 people. And most of these people have never seen a foreigner, and if they have only rarely. Therefore, they love to stare at you – especially if you happen to have blond hair and blue/green eyes ;) And in the Chinese culture, staring is not a rude thing. And so stare they do! At times we have walked by a group of people and watched them turn their heads and continue to stare at us. They also take pictures with their phones – even in the city, where foreigners are popular, we still find people staring at us everywhere. I have to admit, I will miss this. And they are so friendly! When we see them staring at us we say hello a lot or Ne Hao (hello). This makes them grin even wider and then say it back to us. . . they also point us out to their children and even come up to us and ask to take our picture with them!! We were joking about how many mantels our pictures must now be up over.
Sunday we went to a sushi place for lunch and I ate raw salmon and tuna. I liked the Salmon, but the tuna was a little fishy. Add that to my list of exotic food!

Love,
Your Local Celebrity,
Kelli Lynn
I will be signing pictures of me if you are interested upon my return . . .