Beijing

The flight to Mongolia lasted 14 hours all together. Two of my fellow interns were on the same flight. They are very nice people - an electrical engineer from Greece and a public policy major.

We decided to explore Beijing in the 12 hours we had during the layover. What struck me most was how polluted the city is - no blue sky in sight despite a lack of clouds and the sun was a blurry haze. I felt unhealthy just breathing.

We had major communication difficulties with taxi drivers but managed to make it to Silk Street Market, a 5 story shopping center in downtown Beijing. The place was packed with all sorts of trinkets, clothes, electronics, and knock off brands of everything (including ipads - btw, it was not appreciated when I tried to take a picture of this). It was also very clear that they were charging exorbitant prices. If you showed interest and then walked away after hearing the price, the cost would miraculously drop rapidly. On a purse, Astasia cut the price down to a 10th of the original. They were also very pushy and would grab your arm and try to hold on as you walked by.

After the shopping, we went to the Forbidden City. There were such beautiful and ornate buildings here. Check out the posted pictures. The imperial gardens were my favorite part though. At one point, we walked out of the trees and into a large paved courtyard. Traditional music was playing and there were maybe 50 Chinese couples dancing in the square. Some were doing swing dance steps and others more like ballroom. After trying to quietly observe, a man invited me to be his partner for a dance. I do not think he understood my warning... he ended up trying to teach me the steps for most of the song. At the end, I am pretty sure I saw him throw up his hands, appalled at my dancing or lack of dancing ability. Regardless, we had a fun time and were able to laugh at ourselves.

We returned to the airport at around 10 pm, where we proceeded to wait another 5 hours for our next leg of the journey.