here's me and alissa hanging out in the train station eagerly waiting in expectation for the train to beijing:
this is to give you an idea of what it is like traveling with these three... (seth, charis, betsy)
hanging out on the train!
this was an incredibly normal and lovely train ride. we had soft sleepers, which means there were four bunks in a room where the door could shut, so us four girls slept in there, and seth was relegated to one bunk in the room next door with the chinese men. we all hung out together in our room though and played cards and such.the three siblings had brought an entire suitcase full of food (laugh now, but it will come back in the story later), plus i had brought quite a bit of food in the extra space in my own bag. that, my friends, is the food suitcase:
at this early stage of the trip, there was no shortage of food at our disposal. on the train, it is not the best option to eat in the dining car, since the prices are more expensive than they would be elsewhere, but also because the food really isn't all that great. you can buy things like ramen noodles for twice as much as you would normally buy them. or you can buy the food that they actually cook in the dining car, but it's not worth it. thus the food suitcase. we got on the train around 11 PM and arrived around 11:30 AM the next day, so there was no need for dinner on the train, but breakfast was definitely a must. we were most certainly stocked up on peanut butter.however, we should also have eaten lunch. some friends met us at the train station with our driver and our van for the next couple of days, and we went straight to the aquarium and zoo, so there was no lunch. again, we were thankful for the food suitcase, so we broke out more snacks. the aquarium and zoo were really not that much to speak of. the aquarium was kind of cool, there were some interesting fish, but not anything incredibly noteworthy. other than maybe the jellyfish.
i learned that jellyfish change colors depending on the light. their were changing lights in the tank, and you could see how the jellyfish dramatically changed color depending on the color of the lighting at the time. that was beautiful.but also, there were just too many people inside the aquarium. too many people tends to be an issue in public places in china, and i don't enjoy that aspect so much, so it may have tainted what i actually would have otherwise thought of the aquarium. who knows.
in the zoo, "animals are too fiece to come close."
yeah. note the roaring lion head. but really, the zoo was a bit sad. i don't recommend the beijing zoo. the enclosures were not very well kept, and they were small and not much to look at. the animals looked rather sad for the most part. we did see pandas, rhinos, elephants, and some other smaller animals. but none of them looked so happy. the most interesting to me was the malayan tapir.
this is one of the animals that was on a board game i played growing up called wildlife adventure. in this game, you searched and rescued endangered animals. because the game was made in the 80s (i think), lots of the animals on it are actually extinct now, but here is one in real life that is still in existence. maybe some of the animals on that game are no longer endangered? i don't know about this one.here are the pandas:
we did spend a lot of time in the van during our time in beijing. here is our van from the front:
our van was a tourist van on weekends and during the summer and a kindergarten van during the school year during the week!
"sow a little wisdom, reap one hundred times the joy."here's alissa and i in the very back seat of the technically 13 passenger van.
more hanging out in the van:
we were definitely familiar with this van and piled into it countless times during the three-which-became-four days that our driver drove us around beijing. it became a familiar sight, and also our place of rest. when we were tired and hot from walking all over places in beijing and from staying up too late playing cards in the hotel the previous night, we would climb into the van and often fall asleep. or we would sing. lots of great singing took place in the van. i wonder if our driver got sick of us or thought we were crazy. we sang everything from songs from the 70s to hymns and other such songs to "you're so vain." it was pretty great. i love being with people who like to sing, and charis's family does! i sure miss the music now that they are all gone and the vacation is over. but i find myself singing a lot of new songs i learned, and singing a lot more in general, which is pretty great. charis tells me i am crazier after this trip, and i think she is right. maybe as you read about the rest of the trip you will see why. but at the very least, i am more free to break out in song!
anyway, this has been a summary of our first day in beijing.
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