Beijing, Day 3

Oh, the adventure. At 1:00 am Thursday morning in Beijing, as I was getting ready to go to bed, I noticed that the two boxes on the bathroom wall flipped up and there were outlets inside. I was very excited about this because Wednesday morning, I tried to plug my hairdryer into an outlet in the main part of the apartment only to discover that the plug didn’t fit. Seeing these two new plugs, I grabbed my hairdryer and anxiously tried to plug it in. With a bit of a wiggle, in it went. I turned the hair dryer on to test it and snap.. crackle.. pop. After a few sparks flying, I managed to wipe out the electricity in the entire apartment, including the air conditioning. Being that it was too late to call anyone, I decided to open the window and try to get some sleep. It would have been fine except that there is a building under construction right outside my window. Finally at 3:00 a.m., I fell asleep when the workers took a break. My alarm clock was the jackhammer that resumed at 6:00.


With no hope of falling back to sleep, I decided to get dressed and head out in search of coffee. Surely Starbucks would be open. Not in Beijing. Luckily I found a McDonald’s (Michael can’t believe those words came out of my mouth) and I sat there with my McCafe waiting for the Starbucks to open at 7:30 in order to get internet access. It is a helpless feeling to be sitting in a pitch black apartment 7200 miles away from home.


With help from a lot of caffeine, I stayed at Romp n’ Roll until 12:30 and got to do Tumble Tunes training with the instructors. They sounded really great and I was very proud to see first hand all the hard work they had put in to learn how to conduct the musical activities. I was able to take a nap around lunch and then I headed back to Romp n’ Roll for more organization and training. I have taken pictures of the gym that I wanted to share with you.

I left work with Ms. Jill around 6:30 and we went to the massive shopping mall across the street. We were able to get just about anything at a store called Carrefour. After a bite to eat, we made our way home only to find that we came out of the wrong side of this section of the mall and couldn’t find our way back. After a lot of walking in the rain, we finally found our way home. Thursday couldn’t come soon enough.

Two interesting facts I found out today:

1. Owning a gun is against the law here. Police officers aren’t even allowed to carry them. Only bank security guards are allowed to carry guns.

2. There is one day between Monday and Friday that each car is not allowed to drive. It is all indicated by he number your license plate ends with.

Zai Jian (Good-bye) until tomorrow.