Alone and Lost in Beijing + Food Poisoning=Awesome

This story should serve as a cautionary tale for people traveling. Learn from my mistakes, which mostly consisted of me not thinking.

I arrived in Beijing with a foolishly small amount of information. First, I knew I was meeting my friend Erika at Dongzhimen station. I knew the name of the hostel we were going to stay a day from then. I knew that I was in China.

Important things I did not know:
1. How to say ANYTHING in Chinese.
2. Where Dongzhimen station was.
3. That day was National Day, and thus most things were closed (including the aforementioned hostel).
4. Where Erika was in Dongzhimen.
5. Where we were staying that night.

I'm not usually a planner. This isn't much of a problem, and on a good day I think of it as being spontaneous. On a normal day, though, it's just plain idiotic. No one should go to a foreign country without at least some idea of where they might stay that night. One would think that I'd learned my lesson in Bologna when I had similar problems, but no. At least in Bologna I spoke the language.

I got to the meeting place late (my flight was an hour and a half late because it was National Day). When I couldn't find Erika I figured she didn't know I got her email so she might not even be there. Erika didn't have a phone and I didn't have so much as a city map. That's when I realized how screwed I was.

To avoid making too big a deal out of the situation (and subjecting you to a drawn out epic) let me just summarize the following events: I couldn't find Erika even though I wandered around the station for about two hours. I tried calling the hostel and a Erika's friend's contact number, but both numbers were "out of service." After that, I figured my only way of finding her was through email, and I needed to find an internet cafe. The cafes (what few there were) were closed for National Day. I befriended a nice British couple who took me to their hostel and let me use their laptop. While there, the wife told everyone about my plight and I got a lot of sympathy from a large number of British people, as well as offers of rooms, couches, and the like for the night. Five hours after we were supposed to meet, Erika and I finally found each other. She had been waiting at Dongzhimen the whole time, but I missed her somehow.


The picture is of Oven Mitt chilling at the hostel. Or more specifically, hanging out in front of the free toothbrushes/shampoo that the hostel provided.

After that odyssey, Erika and I were tired (She was really worried about me. This was fair because after it got dark I started to worry about me a little). We were couch surfing (I don't feel like explaining it right now, but you can look it up), with a lady who worked for the U.N. Or the embassy. I forget. Anyway, she took us to an IRISH PUB. I couldn't get over it. I arrived in Beijing, got really lost, finally found my friend, and the first place we went was AN IRISH PUB.

In all fairness Erika felt the same. But as I mentioned, it was National Day . It wasn't just National Day, it was the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. There was a big ceremony at Tiananmen square (think larger than the opening ceremonies at the olympics), and couch sitting lady wanted to watch it. Erika and I chatted and watched the ceremonies; it lasted for a few hours. We didn't eat much because we didn't want to spend vacation money on pub food.

Anyway, the lady kept us up pretty late that night, and we had to get up at 5:30 in the morning the next day. This was because we were GOING TO THE GREAT WALL!!!!!

We were both pretty tired when we rose, but we walked to the place the van was picking us up. For breakfast we got some food at 7Eleven. I got a pre-packaged croissant. We rode with a group of Americans and two British guys in fluorescent shorts. It turns out I was the oldest person in the car (except the driver, who was kind of cute but didn't speak much English). While we were on the road (it was about a two hour drive) I started feeling queasy. Erika and I were talking, then I started concentrating on not getting sick.

I failed.

About an hour into the drive, I threw up. This was ridiculous in several ways. Just before it happened, I grabbed a small wooden bowl that sat in front of me. So I didn't get anything on anyone (including me) or the van (which would have been awful). After it happened, I sat for a minute, clutching/balancing the bowl, uncertain of what to do. NO ONE NOTICED. Erika, who was talking to me, stared at me a minute and then asked the driver to pull over. But when he did, everyone wanted to know why we pulled over. Then I had to balance the bowl with the care of a scientist removing plutonium from a nuclear bomb as I shuffled out (three people trundled out in front of me because I was seated back in the van). At least nuclear scientists don't have to dodge backpacks and car seats. The most ludicrous part was the fact that I got food poisoning from a pre-packaged croissant. It wasn't even something cool like sketchy street meat.

I don't want to end the blog on a food poisoning note, but the story of the Great Wall is epic in nature, and will require a lot more time than I have. So let me just give you a small taste (unfortunate choice of words) of how I felt when we got there.

I was tired from traveling and getting only one or two hours of sleep.
I was hungry, but too nauseous to eat anything.
I was dehydrated from losing everything from my stomach.
I felt sick and had a headache.

None of those things mattered, though, because I was at THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA!!

(That's a map of the trails around the Great Wall. I'll explain more later.)
Tune in next time for "Lost on the Great Wall!", or, "Why didn't we read the pamphlet before we signed up for this freaking hike?"

Beijing Pics

I put photos from Beijing on Facebook, so if you're interested in seeing those, check it out. Otherwise, there will be an abbreviated version on this blog some time in the near future.

Chew Sock

Okay, so I was going to update and discuss Korean television.

That didn't happen. Obviously.

However, we'll table that topic, because the reason I didn't blog about Korean tv was that last week was Chuseok (Chew-sock). Chuseok is kind of like a Korean Thanksgiving. It's a harvest festival (ish) and we had Thursday and Friday off. Wednesday was fascinating, because we had our own little Chuseok celebration at my school.

I went to Beijing for the holiday and it was incredible. It's an epic tale of intrigue, food poisoning, silk kimonos, Finnish people, the Great Wall of China, Mongolian farmers, scorpians on a stick, getting lost all alone, and much, much more. However, today I'd like to talk a little about Chuseok because: A. It was really fun. B. I am living in Korea, and I'd be remiss if I didn't discuss it at all. C. I don't want to forget to talk about it. Beijing can wait.

Chuseok is one of the occasions where Koreans wear Hanbok. Hanbok is the traditional dress of Korea, and it's pretty cool looking. Here's a picture that I found online so you can get an idea.


Since I work for a hagwon they made all the teachers wear hanbok. Our bosses provided them, but most of us looked rather ridiculous. Scratch that; all of us looked ridiculous. One of the guys looked like a mix between Aladdin and Jasmine. Most of the women at our school looked kind of, well, fat in the dresses. Meanwhile, the Koreans were beautiful. The children all came to school in their hanbok outfits, and they looked adorable. Naturally I forgot my camera, but I'll be getting pictures and posting them online eventually. Someone told me I looked like an adjuma in my dress. Adjuma is originally a term of respect for a Korean woman who's older than you. However, it has negative connotations. Specifically, an adjuma is often used to describe a "squat, tight haired, steely eyed, brightly dressed woman ready to bowl over, elbow, and gouge their way to a better place in line." (I looked up the word online, and I couldn't really come up with a more accurate description of the stereotype.)

During the morning, the children were taught etiquette. On Chuseok, young children ask their grandparents for money. There's a certain way you're supposed to bow and everything for it. Mostly what I got from it is that when a male sits, he puts his left hand over his right, and females put right over left.

After that, we made songpyeon. Songpyeon are Korean rice cakes. When I heard rice cakes, I pictured the Styrofoam rice cakes we have in the states. That's a whole different ball game. These are of a smooth, kind of cooled pudding texture. It’s sort of like biting into a wet, springy ball of clay. In the center, they put something like sesame seeds or bean paste. Apparently you can make all manner of shapes around the center. For the kids, we mostly stuck to the traditional shell shape. It’s not an unpleasant food, but it wasn’t really for me. Of course, I’m not necessarily a sweets person. Side note: if you have songpyeon, don’t try to bite it in half. Pop the whole thing in your mouth or you’ll end up squirting sweet rice juice all over yourself and/or others. Oops.


There's a picture of songpyeon so you can imagine the flavors a bit.

A little later, we played games. There was jegichagi, a Korean hacky sack style game. Instead of a ball, they use coins wrapped in paper with feathers attached. Being that the girls were wearing really long dresses, they weren't able to play very well. I hiked up my skirt because I was wearing pants underneath, but I had to stop because that encouraged the little girls to do so. They weren't wearing pants underneath.

We also played tug of war, and the kids got pretty into it. We did a tug of war with the teachers, guys against girls. The girls lost, but in our defense we were wearing long dresses and everyone but me slipped on their hems. When they went down, our kids swarmed the rope and pretty soon everyone was tugging. We still lost, but as you might imagine it was an adorable and sickeningly heartwarming time.

There are plenty of other aspects of Chuseok that I didn’t participate in, but this gives you a little taste of what it’s like. Apparently it’s quite the family holiday, much like Thanksgiving. Though, as far as I can tell, they don’t have a Chuseok parade or a football game.