Beijing – Our last stop before home!

(Day 1)

We took another 24 hour train ride from Shenzhen to Beijing! There was definitely a change in the weather!   We went to see Landon’s host mother and visit all of the historical sites.

Here are some cool lamps that we saw during our taxi drive.

The next day we got an early head start on all of the sightseeing and hit up Silk Street, The Forbidden City, and Tinanmen Square.  At night we went to the Tea House for a show.

Here are some of the unusual things that you can eat off the street in Beijing, including silk worm, starfish, scorpion, octopus, animal reproductive organs and more.

We then went to see the Hutong where Landon used to live and saw a cathedral on the way.

The next stop, the Forbidden City and Tinanmen Square

The tea house has performances every night with little previews of Chinese culture entertainment such as Chinese Opera, Face Changing, Chinese comedy, and Chinese instrument performances. There were also performances that need describing among them was a guy that makes all kinds of noises from his mouth. He made cars, trains, animals and even told stories with sounds.  The food was not that great, but the show was so fun and worth it!

Our first Apartment!!

FuTong TianJun- We lived in A6 #1803

The living room/dining area.

The view from our balcony.

The kitchen and washing machine.

The bathroom.

Our Bedroom- we moved the T.V. and the water in there.

It was hard to get good pictures of everything.  We did have another bedroom, but we just stored our suitcases and extra things in there.

Thanksgiving

Our friend, Kenya Ung, from church invited us up to her restaurant in Changping to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal with some of her friends. 

Here is the chef and the Turkey!

Kenya’s father carving the turkey.

Kenya and her homemade apple pie; it was delicious.

Landon and me with the pie.

I didn’t take many pictures of the Thanksgiving meal.  I was too busy stuffing my face with the American food, including stuffing, mashed potatoes, carrots, corn, and pumpkin pie. The pumpkin pie and stuffing was our contribution (Thanks to a wonderful care package!). 

Shekou

We take a bus every Sunday for 2 hours to get to church in Shekou.  There are many foreigners that live there and they always talk about the western restaurants and a good Mexican restaurant.  I was really craving Mexican food so on a Saturday we went down to look at what Shekou had to offer.  Needless to say I was in charge of the camera and did not get many pictures.

We stopped by “Sea World”.  It is a “boat” that is supposed to have fountains all around it. But the Chinese practice water conservation. All the time. No really, I’m not sure if they are ever turned on again after the opening ceremony.

A statue that was out in the middle of nowhere. I think it was originally part of “Sea World” but a road was built between it and the boat so nobody goes there anymore.  I believe it is some goddess statue.

We passed an outdoor restaurant with lamps all around. Looking more closely at the lamps we found there were 10 unique designs. Can you spot all ten?

Here is a picture of our church building (house #66) and the shoe racks in the entry way.

Chinese Food!

It took me a while to find some Chinese food that I like and we now have lots of places to eat.  One of the places that we go often we named Greenleaf Lane!

We have named all of our favorite places to eat.

Pot of Spicy Goodness

The Market behind our apartment complex.

We don’t buy anything there, but Oil Bread.

Bucket Rice

Pulled Noodles (The video isn’t the greatest quality)

Street Puddle

This name came about on our second time there.  It had been raining and we were sitting on the little stools and I fell back and landed in a puddle.  Here they have different types of veggies and meat to pick from and put into your soup with noodles.