Placement test and Tiananmen Square

Today (Friday), we woke up around 7am. Me and Abby went outside to get breakfast at another vendor. I bought my own this time because I was really hungry. It was like…a bread fried with an egg, and then they put sauce and lettuce and meat inside. It was super delicious. I’ve found that most Chinese food is good no matter what meal you’re eating. Like, there isn’t really a differentiation between breakfast and other meals.

After breakfast, we had to go head off to take our placement tests. We took the written first. I felt pretty good about it. I didn’t understand a lot of questions, but I answered most of them and think I got them right. But after we were all done with it, the people in the group I met up with were all like “what the heck was that? I didn’t understand any of it!” and everyone agreed and complained about how hard. I just kept my mouth shut…J

After that, me and Abby just hung out in the dorm for a while. I got to talk on msn with some friends, which always brightens my day.

Then we decided to go to Wumart again. Neither of us have an alarm clock, so we tried to look for one, but to no avail. But we did get to stock up on our supply of bottled water.

After that, we chilled for a while in the lobby, waiting to meet the group to go to Tiananmen Square at 2.

Brother Galer and a few of us set out to try and get taxis, but like the other day, no one wanted to stop for us. Brother Galer got really frustrated. He said that’s never happened to him before, they’re always happy to pick him up. Well, eventually we got some taxis, and we set out for Tiananmen.

It was really cool! Of course I had only seen pictures. I wasn’t really sure what to expect about the square itself, but I had seen a ton of pictures of the Forbidden City, and it looked exactly like the pictures. So I took more pictures.

And speaking of pictures! I lost track of the amount of pictures I was asked to be in. The first one was a mom who wanted to take a picture of me with her young daughter. And I can’t remember all of the times after that. But there were a lot ._.

“Excuse meee, can I take picture with you?”

We met up with more people from out group. A big group of staff from BYUI was there as well. I was pleasantly surprised to see Brother Paul (my favorite teacher in the entire world, out of all teachers to ever teach!). I didn’t know he was coming, so I was so excited! He introduced me to his colleagues as “his star student”. Hehehehe :3

We all walked to the middle of the square and brother Galer gave us a lecture about the history of Tiananmen Square.

Well, put that many white people together and you’re bound to attract some attention. I noticed a steady stream of Chinese people coming toward us, until we were completely surrounded on every side. They were all listening to us speak English and taking pictures and videos of us. After brother Galer finished talking, some of them shyly inched forward to ask if they could take pictures with us. After some of it died down, brother Galer wanted to take a picture of us as a group, but right as he was about to take the picture, two Chinese girls ran into the picture and posed with us. Hahahaa, white people so celebrity!

Then we all went to the silk market, a big big place full of vendors. You could find just about anything there. It was the place to barter for the best prices. I was so completely overwhelmed at first. They all get into your face and try to sell you their wares. And they can all speak a little bit of a lot of languages. So every time we walked by a vendor, it was “hey girl, you want to buy a ____?” They always greeted us with “hey girl” or “hey pretty girl” or variations of that. And Lauren started talking to one of the vendors who didn’t know much English, and when he found out we were Americans, he said “Oh! …what’s up girl!”. It was pretty much the only English he knew XD

A few people split off from the group to go back to the dorms, but the rest of us went out to dinner. We went to a little place at the back of some alley. They pushed most of their tables together in order to let us all sit together. We had a lot of the same food that we got at the restaurant the other day, but changed out a few things. We had some kind of fish, not sure what kind, but it was really good. And we had some duck, which I forgot to try. Last time, we got tofu, but I was too scared to try it. This time we got it again, so I figured I had to at least try it. The flavor was good, but the texture was weird.

After dinner, we all stopped at a little shop and got popsicles for 1 kuai (about 15 cents). They were super yummy! I asked one of the girls who didn’t buy a popsicle if she could take a picture of all of us who did. So she took one, and then everyone else liked the idea too and got their cameras out and gave them to her. We were standing there for like 5 minutes, posing with our popsicles.

Getting home after that was an adventure. We let Adam lead the way, because he seemed to know where he was going. We got on the subway and rode that for like 8 or so stops. It’s always fun to ride public transportation with Adam because he always talks to the Chinese people and asks them silly questions. Yesterday he asked everyone how old they were and how many girlfriends they had. Today he asked everyone if they liked popsicles. Adam is fluent in Chinese, so he can get away with asking people things and chatting with the locals. The rest of us just laugh when we

understand some of the things he says and realize how ridiculous they are.

We got off the subway and wandered around for a while, trying to figure out where the bus stop was. Adam asked a few people for directions, but we got kind of confused and turned around. We finally found it though! So we rode the bus, which was just as packed as the subway. And then we walked another few miles back to the dorms.

We got a loootttttttt of walking in today. And I am definitely ready for bed.