Saturday, Dec 27, 2008

Today, we got up early and decided that we didn’t really like the room we were staying in. After we got dressed and got moving, we went around a few blocks and looked around. We decided that the Erdos Hotel is a lot better for just about the same price. For reference, the previous room was 160 Yuan a night and the new one is 180 Yuan but the quality difference between the two is like night and day. (At this time, the conversion rate between Yuan (RMB) and USD is roughly 7RMB/1USD.)

After we got everything packed and moved from the previous motel to the new hotel, I called Mom and Dad and let them know what was going on. By then it was just about 11 am so we left the room and started walking around the area more as it was the first full day in Beijing since we arrived. We then went to CCB (China Construction Bank) and took money out of Bank of America. BoA has an alliance with CCB where you can use your ATM card at CCB without paying any ATM fees and take money out as RMB. $1,000 US equaled about 6,900RMB. The ATM would only let us take out 3,000 RMB though so we’ll have to get out more tomorrow.

China Citic Bank was next up in order to pay for Justin’s Visa fee (904 RMB or ~ $132USD). Next was to go to China Merchants Bank in order for justin to deposit a large chunk of the RMB into his bank account for safer access to the funds. We also went to BoC (Bank of China) for the same thing. Also at BoC was the Olympic mascots (pictures are below). They were probably four feet tall and plush.

After we were finally done with all the banks, we went to eat. Yonghe King was where we ate and Justin ordered everything for me. It was really good food. The total bill was 42.5 RMB which is roughly $7 or $8 USD but the quality of the food is much higher. I could eat there every day if they had one in West Lafayette! 🙂

After eating we took a bus down the western edge of the third ring to the largest railway station in China and probably the world. We just crossed the First Line (a huge road that crosses all of Beijing and contains many many important “China” buildings. Several pictures below are of the railway station and other buildings in the area. We then found a China Unicom (cell phone) building and went in and spent a lot of time in there waiting until it was our turn. After all the waiting we bought a SIM card for our other cell phone.

As it was starting to get darker by the time we left China Unicom, we then took the Number 1 bus along the First Line and got off just before Tian’ anmenn Square. Pictures below are of the “Egg” building and then some of the area around the Square. We’re going to go to the Forbidden City another day.

Next we walked quite a bit more and then went down another road which was lined with malls. We roamed around one waiting for Justin’s Aunt, Uncle and Nephew as they were going to take us to dinner. I bought a new jacket from Kuhle (we think it’s a German brand) for 211 RMB. After some confusion (we were at the wrong mall), we all finally met. His Uncle and Autnt have pretty good English so they talked to me some. We went to Yu Xiang Restaurant which is a Sichuan restaurant. He warned them that I’m not able to do spicy food too well so they ordered spicy and non-spicy dishes. The room was quite nice as everyone gets an enclosed private room for eating in groups. There was hot tea but they had also ordered Coke for me. 🙂 The food was really very good I thought. Justin said that some of the food was spicy even to him. I had some kind of fried beef that was covered in a sauce, duck, vegies, dumplings, some kind of sweet dessert roll, and I tried some of the things that they were all eating. I think that Justin said that the total bill was over 500 RMB! (It doesn’t seem as much when converted to USD, but compare that to our lunch which was 1/10th the cost.) After dinner, we went back to their apartment and visited for some time. They have a car (a Buick) so we were able to drive there instead of taking a bus. There we had tea and fruit. She had been to Antarctica not too long ago for her research and showed us some plants that they brought back. This one grew only about 5mm in 100 years and almost looked like it was dead. We left at about 10pm as we both were tired. Myself, I was very tired and actually slept (and apparently snored) the whole way back to the hotel. We thanked them then went to our room. I immediately fell asleep for an hour befor Justin woke me up so we could get finished for the day. So we then took a shower, I called Mom and Dad (they were both at our apartment with Molly) and started to upload all the pictures below. It didn’t get done until the next day so that’s when I’m writing this blog post as I had to wait for it all first.

Anyway, that’s pretty much what went on on December 27, 2008 in Beijing. I’ll post more tomorrow!


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