Day Four

For some reason, I couldn’t sleep the previous night. I kept tossing and turning on my plywood bed, splashing in sweat thanks to the lack of air conditioning in my room. What made it even nicer is that even though the window to my room swung wide open and it was cooler outside, the ledge was covered in dirt and feathers … and I don’t think I saw any birds, so you try and figure that out. So, while it was around 43,000-degrees in my room, I decided to bear it while waking up each 19 minutes. I finally relented and turned on the television, because I figured instead of sleep, I actually needed some Chinese television. Imagine my surprise when the first face I see when the television cleared was LeBron James at the free throw line, getting to hoist up another miss in the NBA Finals. Naturally, I watched the rest of this game, marveling at the announcers and the six words (five if you don’t count the cough) they whispered during the second-half the game and of course, watching my favorite sport take place some 15,000 miles away or so.

After the rest of my group caught up to Joe-time, we made our way to breakfast and then to a number of locations … the first of which was the Forbidden City, a city within the city of Beijing. When describing China, it’s hard to come up with different ways to explain how truly great each place seemed to be. So, while saying that the Forbidden City was marvelous or spectacular, it’s hard to give it a phrase that truly justifies how wonderful it was, much as it is with any of the places we visited. This City was marvelous … which again, doesn’t do it justice. It’s also huge and walking around it is breathtaking. Some interesting little tidbits about the city include the fact that when the emperor went somewhere, everything had to be lower than him, so people would bow down or jump to the ground. Also, there’s a Starbucks there.

  Following this, we went to the Summer Palace where the emperor would go when it was too hot at the Forbidden City. Considering they’re like three miles apart, I’m guessing that it couldn’t have been much cooler, but it gave him another place to keep more concubines, so I understand. After all, the 9,999.5 rooms at the Forbidden Palace couldn’t hold enough for me either. Another great place to visit and we took a nice boat ride across the water (as opposed to whatever else you’d take a boat across) and then on to the pearl shop where we saw a guy name Rick kill an oyster and snatch around 67 pearls out of one oyster. Some were pink, some were white, and some in our group were called “Barbie” by Rick. Rick, sorry to disappoint, but her name is “Midge”.

Sadly, this was our last stop in Beijing as we then made our way to the airport where we took a quick, two-hour flight to Xi’an. Walking out into this much-less-crowded airport, we came across our second tour guide, Rocky Stone … no, really. Luckily, Lili stayed with us for this and the third-leg of our tour, but Rocky certainly proved to be the character that his name would suggest, just not the boxer guy. We all had dinner at a restaurant close to the airport. It was discovered that it was Eric’s birthday and the whole restaurant watched as we sung to him and all ate his cake and stuff and he looked so cute with his little crown on … another great Chinese moment.

We then made our way to the hotel, another nice Chinese hotel except something was wrong with this one – the air conditioning seemed to work a little. Hmm, someone screwed up. Because we were in a new city and it was still sort of early, me, Lili, Jorge, Jill and Jairo went out to a karaoke bar and drank and talked until the early morning hours before turning in to get ready for another action-packed day.

That night, I fell asleep on the world’s second-hardest bed.