Beijing Day 2

So I was able to escape from apartment (Jozy came to my rescue) so that I could finally explore Beijing. Oscar got here yesterday, and Jozy took us to get phones and register with the police this morning.  Apparently, in China everyone, even foreigners have to register where they live with the police station.  It was a pretty easy process and we met our land lady who was very nice.  For lunch we went to KFC which was very reminiscent of the U.S. menu except for the Chinese vegetables and fruits on some of the sandwiches and the flan that came with a few of the meals.  I personally felt that the flan was very random for a Chinese KFC (and not good), but what do I know.  Jozy went to work after lunch and Oscar and I attempted to learn the subway and bus lines that we will use to get to work in addition to braving the grocery store.   It is so funny how a very normal everyday activity in the U.S. can be so difficult and intimidating in a foreign country.  The subway is pretty straight forward and easy because all of the stops are translated into English so that you can read where you are.  The bus line, however, is not so simple; everything is in Mandarin so it is impossible to navigate where you are going unless you are fluent.  So we may be taking some unintended trips on the bus until we figure it out.  One cool thing about the layout of Beijing is that Tiananmen Square is the center of Beijing and then there are six big rings (roads) around that center.  The buses stay on their ring and go in circles all day, so I at least know what ring I am if I get really lost. Like the bus stop, most of the items that you buy in the grocery store are written in Mandarin and you would think that it would be fairly easy to decipher what item you are looking at, but take my word for it, it isn’t.  All of the brands are different here so you cannot really tell using American brands, and then there are so many items that we do not have in the U.S., specifically meats, vegetables, and fruits that some sections of the grocery store are very intimidating.  Even an item as simple as lotion is difficult to find.  I bought a small bottle of what I thought was lotion and it ended up being shampoo. Oops! Regardless, it was a fun adventure and most of what we bought was actually what we thought we bought.   We did accidently purchase a pack of tofu thinking that it was cheese until we got home and opened it. That won’t be happening again. To finish the day off we decided to go to bar street which is on the eastern side of the city.  It is a high end street with a lot of foreigners, bars, restaurants, stores etc.  A huge Apple Store, for example, is on this street.  We both enjoyed a beer and people watched for about 2 hours at one of the bars.  It was a good end to the day and we got there without hitch.  The way back, however, was a little bit more interesting.  After taking the subway, we went to our bus stop, but the bus had stopped running for the night, so we grabbed a taxi.  We had asked Jozy to write our address down for instances like this, and the taxi driver took us right to our apartment.  However, when we paid it was apparently 14 Yuan and we thought it was 11 Yuan.  We only had a 100 Yuan bill so the cab driver had to give us change.  Well after 5 minutes of him yelling at us in Mandarin, I called Jozy and asked her to talk to him. After being on the phone for 2 minutes we were all set.  It was a simple misunderstanding, but it just demonstrates how something so simple can become so complicated when you speak a different language.  Overall, we had a busy but wonderful day, and I am already starting to get comfortable with my surroundings.

P.S. My phone number is 13716366647 if anyone wants to call me, but it is expensive.