Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Temples and Shrimp Heads

So - its still hot out. Very hot. I don't understand how Chinese people don't sweat in this weather, we are all seriously melting.

Anyways, on to more pressing matters. We visited a Jade Buddhist temple the other day. It was 20 yuan to get in. The temple was HUGE. They have a rare jade Buddha in their temple which is why it is a big tourist attraction. We had to walk from the metro through some pretty poor areas to get there. It was the middle of the day and we were in a group of ten so it was not a big deal, but it was sad to see all the poverty. Literally everywhere you look in China there are sky scraping housing units, yet in these little shacks there were 3 or 4 people sleeping sharing a bed. Broken windows and doors. Crazy. I think some of them had never seen white or black people before so they were all basically gawking when we walked through.

There were statues of Buddha everywhere in the temple. Huge statues. The main temple had three Buddhas in the entrance, we were told that the one of the left represented the Buddha that accompanied you after death, the one in the middle is the founder of Buddhism and the one on the right represented health and good fortune.

The next day Elizabeth and I did a little shopping in the morning after eating at a "French" bakery. It was good but French is not exactly how I would describe the food. Almost all the pastries had meat in them. Different but delicious. After breakfast we thought we would do a little shopping. Not a very good idea where self esteem is involved. I attempted to put on a pair of large shorts. They barely fit and there is no way in the world they would have ever buttoned.

Elizabeth ended up buying a dress. At home she would fit an extra small, in this store she tried on an extra large and it fit her perfectly. So sad. So sad. Around lunch time a group of us attempted to go to the museum. We never made it, by the time we got there they were closed. But we had a good time getting there. It is not hard to get to but it is in People's Square so we went and ate lunch in there and then had to go through and underground walkway to cross the street to get to the museum. Of course it was basically an underground mall under there and being a group of fours girls and one guy, we got caught up window shopping. When we were eating lunch and on the train we realized that we may be the loudest people in this country. People are never laughing, children are never crying yet we are talking loudly and laughing all the time.
EXPO!
No exaggeration. At lunch my roommate for the trip Elizabeth ordered a shrimp plate. When it came out the heads and legs were still on the shrimp. Looking at her. She had to take the heads off before she could eat them. People were just watching us eat because I am sure that no one in the country eats quite like us.

For dinner we went to Pizza Hut. In China Pizza Hut is a sit down restaurant that is rather expensive. Cheese pizza is the most expensive pizza you can get, more than salmon pizza or like a popcorn shrimp pizza. All of the pizzas have like 5 toppings on them. And no sauce unless it says specifically in the description that it has sauce, which was weird. But it was good. And fountain drinks. Finally. But we were too nervous to ask for refills since they never have drinks with their meals, free refills are kind of hard to explain.

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