last wednesday we went to pizza hut for dinner. that's right, we missed
american food, especially pizza. but it was more than that, the pizza hut here in china is completely different than the ones in the states. the pizza hut was a really nice restaurant. a real sit in, dine in restuarant complete with starters, desserts and cocktails. they still have pizzas but they also have salads, pastas, and even steaks. it was soo delicious, we got different kinds of pizzas and very colorful drinks. i never expected pizza hut to be reinterpreted like this, in such a good way too. the furniture was nice and comfy, there was even a huge dangling chandelier thing on the spiral staircase up to the main floor of the restuarant. 
it was really hot that day. when you go outside, it literally feels like you walked into a sauna. its so hot and stuffy that you cant clearly see 50 feet in front you because of the mist/fog that isnt evaporating. and this is in the middle of the day! we went to sean's grandparents place for dinner but had no appetite. sean was completely soaked from sweat, just walking from our dorm to his grandmother's is a good 15 min walk but sean was pretty sweaty, even me. we changed clothes and his grandmother gave me a really breezy blouse to wear. she served us dragonfruit, which i kept eating cause i didnt want to eat hot food, having no appetite. ive never seen dragonfruit before. it's sorta like kiwi in that theres little black seeds intersperced throughtout but instead of green, dragonfruit is a muddy white. it also has no taste, maybe a little sweet, but just barely. at his grandparents place, we eat dinner and watched primetime dramas. we've been consistantly watching the same 2- one is a cop story, where theres a mafia boss guy, his associates and assassins and the cops want to catch him and all that. everyone is related to each other somehow, i get lost by the story plot. the second to the mafia boss man is an actor that looks oh so much like yuxuan. its kinda scary, except i know im gonna offend yuxuan when i say that this actor has more hair than you. sorry! i should take a pic or something, but really, this guys looks so much like yuxuan, its kinda creepy.
strong laser lights. i think we bought 4 of them and played with it the entire night. the lasers are so strong, you can see the line of light all the way up to the sky, the light can go all the way to the other side of the lake, oh man, ive been wanting one of these babies ever since my astro gsi used it to point out stars in the sky, thats how strong they are. i havent found it in the states, at least not for a cheap price, and of course, they sell these dangerous lasers in china, on the street no less lol. the 6 of us; me, cody, alanna, ken, matt and army matt had dinner at one of the fancy restuarants there. it was soo amazing. the presentation was beautiful,
iron chep worthy, the food was delicious and everything was overpriced but still a good price for the quality, when you convert into american dollars. we sat at a window seat so you could see the glittery lake right outside. everything was so nice!! great atmosphere, very fancy but still comfy and intimate. we tried alot of things we havent had before like lotus root stuffed with glutinous rice (my favorite), vegetarian bacon hung on a frame with dipping sauce, lightly fried softshell crab. omg im getting hungry all over again. matt even had a glass of wine to go with the meal. lolhas there been any drama in the program yet? not anything huge, i dont think, but within our group, theres a bit of hidden romantically tension. its already out there so i can finally say it now. on the taxi ride back from houhai, we let alanna and cody have a taxi to themselves cause they're sorta a couple. but the thing is, alanna is leaving earlier than all the rest of us cause she has med school. and she doesnt want to be in a relationship when shes starting med school. cody, though, likes her alot and alanna finally gave in. theyre not exactly going out, but they were keeping it, whatever "it" is from everyone else until i said its pretty obvious you guys were together, doesn't matter how you yourselves define it, everyone already knows. anyway so me matt and ken took a cab together and thats when ken spilled that he liked alanna too, ever since the first week of the program, but didnt want to ask her out cause he thought she didnt want to get into anything during this program. and now he cant do anything about it cause cody is with alanna. sort of. so during temple of heaven, ken and alanna sat together on the tour bus and ken hinted to her that he liked her. alanna was all tell me what happened last night on the taxi ride! lol. but its the last few days that alanna will be in beijing so it all comes out the last couple of days. [eta: and now i have to edit that alanna and cody aren't going out and they're definately not a couple. alanna is a single woman. whoever tries to dates her better be worthy enough.]
the next place we visited was the pearl market and that was a huge dissapointment. the pearl market is a place where they sell pearls but it was worst than the silk market. the layout was bascially the same, but there was barely anyone there, it was alot more rundown, the pearls were all fake anyway. only the real ones are up on the top floor and no one was there buying anything. we also saw the green lasers on sale here too lol. only alanna bought some pearl earrings and they were really pretty on her. we all knew it was fake, it was so cheap. sean bought a 128 GB flash that didnt even work when he got back and tried it. it corrupts everything. so yeah, dont buy electronics at places like this, its fake, just like all the wiis, ds, iphone that they are selling there too. i hope he learned his lesson.
for lunch (we were starving) we ate at a porridge place at the restaurants across the street from campus. they had sweet cold porridge(!) it was so hot outside, who actually would eat hot porridge in a season like this? the food was ok, but not really filling and the cold porridge wasnt actually that sweet. also, we couldnt read the menu so we just randomly pointed to pictures lol. sometimes that works, sometimes that doesnt. the rest of the day, i just hung out with sean in his room and listened to music.
sunday we didnt do anything in particular. alanna was going on a tour to the ming tombs but they said it was pretty bad, didnt get to see anything. the rest of the group that didnt go had a free day, and it felt so good to do nothing. i had a steak with eggs lunch, did my laundry, napped for a bit, tried to upload pics.
on monday, there was barely anyone who was on time for class. i walked into kouyu class and only a few of the koreans where there on time. XD anyone, ppl trickled in as the hour went by. terrible. in calligraphy class, we practiced for our fan project. in the end i didnt do a fan but i still practiced anyway. i practiced one word characters instead of doing a whole poem, since ive already done that for my big final calligraphy project. i practiced characters that meant great wave, silence, undecorated beauty and peaceful. great wave was giving me a hard time. the teacher said i write pretty well but i know i give myself high standards so im always still frustrated.
after class, we went to beijng zoo area to go shopping. but when we got there, there was a huge mass migration wave coming from the direction we wanted to go to. it was really hard to go against the wave of people and we thought it was kinda weird until we found out that all the shops had just closed and that wave of people were just leaving the stores. damnit! what shops close at 5pm! the sun is still up! XD so since we couldnt shop there, we took the subway to xidan instead. we went to the little vendor mall instead of the dept store mall and me and alanna were so happy and excited because finally we found a place that had clothes and jewlery that looks good. we wanted to buy everything we saw, we were like little girls in a candy shop, except big girls in a clothing shop lol. but we had a hard time acutallly buying anything, even tho everything looked so good. in the end, i got some chii keychains, alanna got a pair of earrings, and sean got some one piece posters and phone cover.
stuart wandered around on his own. we all met up with matt and ken in the big dept store. on the way over there, alanna and cody were holding hands. it was so cute, the 2 couples (sorta) from our group, it was like a double date and they were so happy together. <3 we all had a sushi dinner which wasnt very filling even though we were starving. it was also pretty expensive, comparable price to sushi in the states, but we didnt trust sushi that much in china but just wanted to try it out. again, the restuarant was closing down on us as we were eating, we were like the last groups to leave. XD on the subway ride back, we gossiped about everyone in CLERC. alanna didnt hold anything back cause she was about to leave china anyway. 
the rest of wednesday, we went to seans grandmothers and left relatively late around 9p since we watched alot of dramas. we took the bus to houhai. do not do that. it is a very bad idea. it took us an hour to get there by bus, we had to transfer once. and then you still have to walk up to the lake. we spent an hour wandering in the hutongs trying to get there and before you knew it, we've almost walked around the whole freaking lake. turns out houhai isnt just a lake, the name of one of the lakes is houhai but the area, also called houhai is actually 3 lakes connected to each other and the most banging part isnt at houhai lake, its actually the lake east of it, called qing lake or something. so yea. now me and sean know the area very well lol. we met up with alanna and them and ate late snack at a fancy restauarant, a different one from the one we ate at last time. brian and annie were with us this time. we went up to the top level of the restuarant cause the bottom part was a club sorta with live music and singing so it was too loud to talk. we tried to order dessert but they werent serving it anymore i guess cause it was so late? but it wasnt THAT late. so i just got a long island iced tea and it was kinda diluted. they got really overpriced ice cream that was served in a paper cup. wow. the restuarant space was pretty nice tho, lots of cool decorations, like the wall behind us was a maya stone thing and there were couches next to the big windows overlooking the lake with curtains and candlelight. everyone was too tired tho, so we just talked for a bit and went back. when we arrived at school, we got meat on a stick served by the roadside vendors that are always there outside our school gate. it was like midnight and they still havent closed shop. i was kinda scared to eat it cause i was afriad ill get diarreha but i was fine and the meat was surprisingly tasty. it was cooked on a grill, made to order. so good.
wednesday, alanna left us. we skipped the last part of class to have one last lunch at yoshinoya's with her. the sky was pouring rain down on us. it was a very wet and very sad day last day with her. the streets were completely flooded, you had to wade water that went up to ur ankles. it was so gross. alanna even lost her flipflog wading thru a particularly deep pond on the way back to campus. all the guards standing by saw and were laughing. so, cody carried her across in his arms. hehe. she drove away in a taxi and cody and matt went with her. alanna hugs very tightly and i was already missing her alot. things from them on were very different without her. we tried to eat dinner together at night, the guys and me, but everyone was so out of it and so tired and miserable, no energy without her. alanna had some sort of magical hyperenergy that we all picked up on, without her, this is how we're normally like. 
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