days 56-62: beijing

To stop reading Harry Potter, I'm writing another entry. This week has been filled with disgusting foods. None of these I intentionally ate, but only after I gulped it down did I know what it was. Earlier this week, I went out to dinner with some teachers and a Tsinghua volunteer. The Tsinghua volunteer took us out to an authentic restaurant outside campus where they serve grilled kebabs and hot pot. Hot pot is just a pot of hot oil and spices and meat on skewers that you just pull out and eat. The first meat I tried tasted exactly like a fatty skin, but I just ate it like anything else. The second meat was kind of chewy and I couldn't really chew it properly. I asked the Tsinghua volunteer what it was and he told me to just swallow it, so I did. And he told me the first was the lining of a sheep's stomach and the second was the intestines of a pig.
Gross. Then, last night, I went to a Mongolian restaurant with a Mongolian and ate this black stuff. I asked him what it was and why it was black and it was sausage made from blood. I can't really decide which one is more disgusting.
This makes a good story, and now I feel warmed up for trying dog meat later.

I'm not sure what I would do without the help of the Tsinghua volunteers and my students. My Tsinghua volunteer got me 80 more hours of internet time and is making copies of my Monday's lesson. I took one of my students with me on Friday to help get a train ticket to Xi'an. My Lonely Planet says to get the hard sleeper for 300 RMB (~$40US) and if that's not available, pay the extra 200RMB (~$26US) for the first class sleeper. Unfortunately, the train was sold out of hard sleepers, soft sleepers, and soft seats, leaving me to ride on an 14 hour overnight train ride on a crowded hard bench. This should be a good story and it was cheap. I'll be able to travel to and back from Xi'an for the amount I was willing to spend on one ticket.
It rained the other day and the sky was blue! About every week, it rains and cools down the city. My favorite part of the rain is that the smog seems to go away for a day and you can actually see the sky and clouds. Usually in Beijing, the city is so polluted it's constantly hazy and gray, even when there are no clouds. This is the view from my room:

Classes this and last week were good. The highlight was on Friday we played "Cannibal Island." Each person had an occupation associated with their numbers. Like ones were doctors, twos were lawyers, threes were entertainers, fours hunters, fives construction workers, you get the point. They were split up into their own islands and then the big decision came: who will you eat first? Once they fought and argued for a while, they had to send someone up to the "dinner table" at the front. Then the meals had to first explain to the class why they were chosen to be eaten and then second, they had to argue between themselves who from the dinner table would be eaten first. Sadly, my two favorite students were eaten first in both situations :( This is Albert explaining why we shouldn't eat him first: (from left to right: Evan, Tony, Belinda (behind Tony),Mickey, Albert, Tomas)

Another thing about my class is we won our singing competition! We had to compete against 7 other teams in our province, and since we won first place there, we're going to nationals to compete in front of the entire 3,500 person camp! Our 50-person chorus is singing "Go West" by the Pet Shop Boys. Before the competition, I was looking forward to never hearing that song again, but since we won, we will practice every day until the final competition Wednesday. I wikipedia'ed "Go West" and actually it's about the gay movement in the United States moving west to San Fransisco and the spread of AIDS. And now my class is singing it, but I think they think it means go west to the USA...from the east...very literal. I'm including names because I worked very hard to learn them (from left to right, back row: Enya, Amily, Belinda, Tony, Faye, Julie; front: Connie, Candy, Misha)
(front: Jerry, Albert, Ivan, Elephant).
It's the final week of teaching and I finally got their names.

Today I went to the Temple of Heaven. If I knew more about temples, I'm sure it would be a lot more impressive and have more of an impact on me, but I was hot and tired and hungry so our group left early to eat and go shopping at the Pearl Market. By the way, let me know if you want any pearls. They are really cheap here. Like $25US for real pearls. I got Flo a shirt in exchange from the ones I stole from him. It's hilarious. He'll never wear it because of all the pandas on it, but I thought it was funny. He is going to post this now and Flo still hasn't seen the shirt :) muhahahahaha