Beijing... No shit.

The week before Jen and I left for Beijing, we were on totally different schedules. She was crazy-busy with school and silly presentations (working on a musical about McDonald's for her musical theater class...ha!) and I was... well, not doing much. I'd pretend to be busy, but mostly I just kept thinking about vacation. Everytime I talked to my mom on the phone, we'd try and talk about other things but would always revert to the I-can't-wait-to-see-you-in-Beijing topic. And so it began...


We left early Wednesday morning. I overslept by an hour. Anyone surprised? Our DragonAir flight was nearly full. We didn't care because we got to eat the pork surprise on our flight. Somehow the "surprise" part was pretty tasty. Salty, but edible. The flight was 3-1/2 hours, so they showed a movie-- some kind of adult, sexy animated thing. Since I didn't plug my headphones in, I'd look up at it from time to time. I figured that kind of stuff would have been banned by the Chinese government. Guess not..

When we pulled up the hotel, Jen and I were astounded! We were going to live like "real people" in a place that had a real lobby, hotel bar, turn-down service and a bathtub! I decided that one of the best parts about our spring break was that it truly was a break from our normal low-budget traveling style. We met Mom and George in the bar (happily) and started to plan the rest of our sightseeing. The first observation was that my mom was drinking hot tea and George was drinking a Tsing Tao-- neither of them with their normal vodka-soda lime/no-lime combo. Turns out, ordering a vodka-soda (or "woodka with club soda... soda water... with gas... woodka... yes?! Ok.") is much more complicated in Beijing. Welcome to China!

Our first night we ate at the Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant. It was in a desolate alley just off one of the main boulevards. Even our cab driver seemed a little nervous as to how to direct us to the restaurant. Turns out, we just had to follow the painted signs. Here, ducky ducky!

Luckily, we had a reservation because the restaurant, albeit small, was packed! The look on George's face was pretty priceless when we walked in. The night before we arrived, apparently the two of them had a pretty bad local restaurant experience. I think George was ready for another disaster.
While we waited, we got to look at all of the "famous celebrities" that have graced Li Qun with their appearance. The celebrities consisted of random diplomats and local pop stars. We tried to pretend we were just as famous, so we posed-- like the locals do.

Of course, we went to Li Qun to order Peking Duck... and it was delicious. It came with these super thin pancakes. I thought it was appropriate to play with my food.

Midway through dinner, Jen went to the bathroom. She came back laughing and said, "You have to see the bathroom! I'm going back just to take a picture." I assumed the worst... but it was better than I could have imagined. Yes, it was a squatter. What made it so funny was that right above the toilet two words were painted on the wall in what looked like red finger nail polish. It simply said, "No shit." Looking down at the toilet you could see why. There was a saucer-sized grate over the toilet drain with holes the size of small peas. No poo was getting past that thing.

I think we're obsessed with bathrooms. Squatters, western toilets, funny signs, whatever. Then again, my roommates and I in Austin seem to always find poo a hilarious topic of conversation. That's another story. After a few laughs and picture with the owner of the restaurant, we went back to the hotel. The next day was going to be a long one, so we went to bed early. So00 good!... phrase of the week!