Before Beijing

So we leave for Beijing tomorrow evening, and right now it's sort of a last-minute-throw everything together planning stage. I'm pretty sure we have about 15 things planned to do over three and a half days. We'll see how many things we actually get to... haha. Basically my only request is that we see the great wall.

Last Wednesday my Chinese culture professor Weiqi took us to get haircuts. They give you a neck, shoulder, and back massage for about 20 minutes before your haircut, it was great. The massage costs 6 RMB... about 90 cents. Five of us went, and Weiqi was running around translating for everyone. I pretty much just picked a picture of a magazine and told Weiqi to tell him that I trusted him. It was a pretty spur of the moment decision, I figured I might as well just let him do what he wanted. How many times do you get your hair cut in China?

BTW, I have to credit most of these photos to Colleen and Katherine, I stole most of them from their picassa albums.















Getting my hair washed and head massage. They have this shampoo they just kinda squirt on and then it foams up.


























Hairdresser: "This haircut requires a lot of maintenance"
Adam: "It's okay, I brought gel."















The finished product. They curl your hair to show you what it would be like if you got a perm, trying to sell it to you.

Afterwards we went to a grocery store. They had live snakes, turtles, bullfrogs, and crayfish. Supposably if you buy one they just put in in a bag (alive) and give it to you!

Friday we had a cooking party. We learned to make zong zi. It's made of rice with beef and beans wrapped in bamboo leaves. Mine didn't turn out too well. The lady teaching us to make it swiftly took it away from me and remade it.





















Saturday we went skiing at an indoor ski hill. They give you everything you need--coat, gloves, snowpants, skis... and I was fortunate enough to get the trash-collector-style outfit. The snow was pretty bad, because it was all man made it was mostly just ice. And you had to take off your skis to go up the conveyor belt to the top of the bunny hill. Overall, not a great place to ski, but watching Chinese people ski made up for it. They pretty much go straight down the hill, realize they are going too fast, and intentionally fall. We sat for about 20 minutes and just watched people crash and burn. It was too funny. I tried to upload a few videos below, hopefully they work.

My general feelings about the t-bar. It was excruciatingly slow.

How to Stop Skiing: Chinese Style I

How to Stop Skiing: Chinese Style II

Crash!

Hopefully those work. Well, we leave for Beijing tomorrow at 9:40 PM and come back on Sunday, so look for an update around then! It will definitely have lots of pictures.

Katie