Our last day on the other side of the world was spent in Beijing. Rather than having a schedule to follow, however, we were permitted to explore the city freely. We were given some suggestions by our tour guide Barbara and our professor on where to go, but otherwise, it was up to us (which was rather exciting!)
The evening beforehand, Hali asked if we could switch roommates for a couple nights: ie: if she could spend the night in Kate's hotel room and if Caitlyn could be my roomie for a night. This was pretty cool, as Caitlyn and I had gotten pretty close by this point, and Kate and Hali are actual roommates at the college they attend. So everyone was satisfied!
As such, the day started off fairly late (9am...) for us, as Caitlyn and I just wanted to sleep as much as possible. We managed to wander into the breakfast buffet just before it closed, and spent a good deal chit chatting with other members of the tour group to see where they were headed. Eventually, we bumped into Kate and Hali, so we all decided to head out together (taxis are cheaper in numbers... then again, they were pretty cheap in Beijing to begin with, at least when compared to taxis in major cities in this country).
We weren't really sure where to head to first, so we eventually went to Tienanmen Square. It wasn't quite as exciting as I hoped it to be-- just a large number of folks taking pictures of themselves in front of Mao. I did have a picture of the area at one point, but I can't seem to locate it. Perhaps some other time.
So, we consequently got a little bored. We wandered the streets for a while. We spent our time looking through little shops, mingling with the locals, and buying a number of cold beverages because Beijing is HOT and HUMID and I almost fainted due to dehydration at one point. So yeah. Beverages are good.
We eventually hailed down another taxi and made our way to Silk Street/Avenue. I'm not much of a shopper myself, but it was AWESOME. If you're like me, you thought Silk Street was like... a street.... with a bunch of people... selling silk. Not exactly. It's more like a four floor building with people selling all sorts of items (including silk items and faux silk items) for an outrageous price. But. If you're smart enough, you can haggle them down to a very reasonable price and get some pretty neat stuff. I merely entered the building because the other three girls were interested in seeing what there was to buy, but I eventually fell in love with this Italian shirt ( I know, right? Buying Italian shirts in Beijing. Makes total sense.) It's black and has this abstract female's head on it in silver. It's also extremely soft, although not made out of actual silk. My goodness. At first I assumed that nothing would fit me because... honestly... the sizes in Beijing are much smaller than those in the United States... but this shirt fits me PERFECTLY and is quite nice. Yikes. I don't even like shopping and I found something cool.
While there we bumped into a bunch of people from the tour group, which was pretty neat. We made plans with some of the guys to meet up at the Beijing Hard Rock Cafe because, honestly, we were all just craving some American food. Kate and I got overwhelmed by the pesky employees (they really wanted to sell you something) before the other girls, so we left the building and bought some ICE CREAM and chit chatted for a while as we waited. I cannot express how excited Kate was about ice cream, but I can say that I was pretty pumped considering we had not seen it (or rather, hadn't seen a normal flavor/ a type of ice cream I trusted) in a while. Mmm. Delicious.
We then found Hali and Caitlyn again, took a quick stop at the ATM for some mulah, and headed on over to the restaurant. The boys weren't there when we arrived, however, so we just sat down and ordered some nachos as we waited. Wow nachos. Best meal of my life. The ironic thing is that it really seemed like a meal. We ordered the nachos as an appetizer, but by the end of it, we were really full because we hadn't been eating that much over there. The boys finally arrived about an hour late because their taxi driver didn't know what the Hard Rock Cafe was (we had gotten some advice from our professor to find someone who could speak English to write the Chinese character for where it was down on a piece of paper, so we didn't have this issue). We all sort of laughed. They got some food; we hung out with them and chatted some more. And then we headed back to the hotel.
At this point, it was probably four pm, so the traffic was a little crazy and the ride back much longer than we had previously expected it to be. It was a blessing in disguise, however, as the four ladies of our group got a real opportunity to talk about our lives, our pasts, our future hopes and dreams, etc. It was a very revealing and amazing conversation-- I can only hope that I can get in touch with those three girls this semester some time to hang out, as they are all attending colleges not even an hour and a half away from me, so it is very possible we could chill out some time. Yea for meeting awesome people in foreign countries that live not too far away!
Once back at the hotel, we sort of chilled for a while, talking and trying to plan the evening's adventures. At first, we were thinking about going to the 80's night the Hard Rock Cafe was hosting around 8pm-- there were supposed to be live bands and such, plus we would get the opportunity to dress up in our new outfits we just purchased. For one reason or another, this never ended up happening, and a lot of the people my age spent the rest of the evening in the hotel hanging out. Caitlyn, Ryan and I headed out to see what the nightlife was like in Beijing, and stopped off at a few restaurants and such. We ended up bumping into this couple from Amsterdam, which was pretty cool, so we chatted about politics for a while and then wished them a good time (they were on their honeymoon). Caitlyn and I also got into a rather detailed conversation with these two business men from the Dominican Republic, which was neat, too. Otherwise, it was a pretty mellow night, and we returned back to the hotel at a decent hour to get our rest for our long journey back across the globe.
The next day was pure travel. It took an hour and a half to get back to the airport, and then waiting around as we got our stuff checked, etc, then a 13 hour flight back to New York's JFK, and finally a four hour ride back to Boston (it was more like 5 hours because we got stuck in really bad traffic and had to take an alternate route because of it). My mom, dad, and sister picked me up at the bus station around 10pm of the next day (this would be July 19th according to our time, but it was odd as we left on the 19th Beijing time, so it was almost like traveling back into time. weird). By the time I got to the bus station, I was so exhausted and so sick of being surrounded by strangers I just wanted to go home and collapse.... but that evening I ended up hanging out with a couple friends from home who were eager to see me (and I them-- I missed them all so much) and that was that. I had returned from the adventure of a lifetime.