Day 3

Day 3 was very busy! We got up and went straight to the Forbidden City. This is a place where the dynasties of China used to stay and common people were not allowed in. This place was huge!! It was also really awesome. There are 9,999 rooms in the city and over 900 buildings still left. When walking through, it felt like I was walking in a huge maze. You couldn't really see much around you so you weren't for sure where exactly you were going. I liked seeing all of the traditional Chinese buildings and it was crazy knowing how old those buildings were. It took quite a long time to get from end to end of the city.

After walking through the Forbidden City, we walked past Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square has been a place of many historical events in China. It now serves as a meeting place and recently been the home to some student protests and is used a lot for political events.

After walking through Tiananmen Square we at lunch at a traditional Chinese restaurant like the Tai one we went to only a lot nicer. They had some strange dishes that they brought out to us. One was a whole fish, head and tail included. Sandra, our instructor, ate the head and another student ate the tail. Gross!! I didn't like too much that they had. I liked some chicken and that's about it.

After lunch we walked along this strip mall that seemed to be deserted because it had just been built for the Olympics but now the economy is not so good so no one can afford to rent it out. After walking down this street we got to the end and saw these funny looking bike things that people could sit in and they would take you around the city. Everyone took these little things to a place called the Pearl Market. They said it would be 20 RMB. I rode with a guy in our group named Nick. Our driver ended up dropping us off across the street from everyone else and when we went to pay him 20 RMB he said it was 300. Then we gave him 300 and he said 300 per person. So, we ended up giving him 600 RMB for the ride. He jipped us!!! Nick and I totally were not thinking for some reason and everyone else in the group paid 20 RMB total for their ride. This was before I had gotten the chance to really wheel and deal with people so I wasn't thinking straight for some reason. I was sooo mad! It really wasn't that many USD but it was still the fact that he did that to us.

Anyways, after that ride we went to the Pearl Market. The Pearl Market is where you can pretty much get anything fake that you want. They have electronics, shoes, bags, clothes, jewelry, and many other things. For anything you buy though you have to banter back and forth with them to get the price you want. They start out really high then you have to bring them down. It's actually pretty fun to see how low you can get them to go. If they say they don't want your price you just walk away then they will yell at you to come back. This place was 4 floors high with the floors filled by 10X10 little spots of people selling a bunch of stuff. I loved it!!

We ended up going to a Kung Fu show after the Pearl Market. It was really funny because everyone was exhausted and people were falling asleep during it. It was a bunch of music playing and, in my opinion, wasn't that exciting so I did start to fall asleep also. After the show everyone was exhausted and we went back to our rooms.