The More You Know…(A post by Brendan)

So this might be common knowledge, but I found it interesting. The racial slur gook came

about during the Korean war. The Koreans’ word for foreigner is waygooken, but their word for

Americans is megook. So when US soldiers would walk through villages the Koreans would run

up shouting “Megook! Megook!” The soldiers’ reaction was, yes, we know you are a gook.

Pro's and Con's

+ Tomorrow is our "School Festival" and I don't have to teach!

- I am sick, possibly strep.

+ It's fall and the leaves are starting to change!

- There are still mosquitoes dive bombing us in our sleep.

+ 2 months till we come home!

- We're flying United. Bleh.

+ They have officially outlawed corporal punishment in Korean schools. (For the first time ever.)

- The students are insane.

+ We went to Costco and bought a bunch of awesome western food.

- We have very expensive tastes.

+Life is good.

Beijing (cont.)

Beijing Day 3.

We were awoken by the sound of our room phone ringing. Assuming that it was the wake up call that I had requested, Brendan answered the phone. In fact, it was not the wake up call, but our tour guide coming to pick us up for our trip. The wake up call never happened and we were late. Such was the beginning of the day for our trip to the Great Wall of China.

As we rushed to get ready, I took a quick jaunt downstairs to grab some food. I met up with the tour guide and told him that we were running behind schedule because of our non-existent call. He seemed to be pretty understanding. I went in the breakfast room to grab some croissants for the road. As I was buttering them up, a short old Englishman proceeded to make fun of me for being tall. Being already slightly perturbed I ignored him and ran back out to the lobby. When I got to the tour guide he suggested that if I wanted a wake up call, I have to ask for one from the front desk. I'm thinking to myself, "Yes, I know that tiny Chinese man, I am not an idiot." He then told me that the front desk clerk said I was lying and had never asked for a wake-up call.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person, that on top of everything else that happened was enough to have Brendan find me yelling at the front desk lady while she sat dumbfounded behind the desk. The interlude was awkward enough that I didn't approach the desk for the entire rest of our trip.

Word to the wise, don't ask hotel clerks to give you a wake up call. Brendan and I have NEVER had them actually call us. This resulted in us nearly missing a morning flight in Malaysia, and holding up a giant group of people in China. Great. I don't know why I always believe that they will actually call us.

The trip to the wall was uneventful. The guide was giving us his cheesy, History-of-China-and-The-Great-Wall-speech most of the way there. I tend to despise guided tours and especially tour guides. I don't like fake happy people and I like my freedom. But that day, the simplest way to get to Wall was through him. We took a gondola up to the top of the mountain range and climbed all over the section of the wall were on. We even went a bit off of the beaten path to a section of the wall that was crumbling and not open to tourists. It was exhausting, but fun. I was really looking forward to going back down though, there is a luge that you can ride down. Not made of ice, but a long metal slide from top to bottom. Of course, being the day that God decide to hate Kelly, the luge was closed for repairs. On the way back down to our van Brendan and I bought some dried mangos and walnuts from a street vendor lady. Brendan's mangos were good, but my walnuts tasted like chlorine. Such is life.

After the Great Wall we visited the ming tombs, an underground burial spot for Emperors and Empresses (Emperi?) It was very...Eh.

On to the jade museum and lunch! Eh..

At the end of the tour the guide handed out review forms to everyone. Brendan wrote my name on it and suggested that I put that he was a "fair" tour guide, rather than an excellent. (Due to the fact that he may or may not have been drunk for the second half of our trip.) After I handed it in, the dude has the nerve to confront me about his review. I informed him that I wasn't in the mood to argue. He was probably jealous because I rated the insanely agressive van driver "excellent."

That night we ate some pretty awesome dumplings at a random hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Nothing like what a tour guide would take you to.

Korean subway madness!!!

This is a perfect example of how scary old women are in Korea. They are hardcore!!!!!!

If I was that girl, I would have thrown some serious punches though...

Beijing (cont.)

On day 2 of our whirlwind tour of Beijing, we decided to hit up some major tourist attractions, Jingshan Park, The Forbidden City and Tienamen Square. I woke up around 7:30 as I am wont to do, and had a leisurely breakfast of, you guessed it, eggs and salad. Brendan slept. The day was much warmer than our first exploration day, so we were happy to wear shorts and t-shirts.

Our first stop of the day was Jingshan park. I had read somewhere online during my intense pre-trip research extravaganza, that this park gave awesome views of the forbidden city and allowed for you to enter the FC from behind and leave from the front (supposedly a much better way to see it.) Brendan decided that wee should walk from our hotel to the park, another part of his secret plot to make me exercise. It took forever, but it was good to be able to see more of the city...I guess. On our way we passed by a popular nightlife place called Houhai. It a million restaurants and bars surrounding a small lake. Very picturesque. At Houhai lake we had one of many Chinese guys try to sell us a ride in a rickshaw, but we were feeling spry and decided to keep trekking on to the park.

Brendan, our navigator got us as far as the back wall of the park. We had no idea where the entrance was, so we had to guess which way to walk along the wall in order to get into the park. He was feeling the right hand side, so we walked in the direction. And walked, and walked while I mercilessly mocked him for choosing the wrong direction. We eventually found the entrance and Brendan was victorious. We briefly debated grabbing lunch at one of the restaurants outside the park but decided to buy a few bottles of water and some "ice cream-mint flavored oreos." I don't know if these are popular in the states, but we found these things disgusting. Brendan said that they made his mouth burn.

Upon arriving at the park, we immediately decided to climb the small mountain in the center. It had a temple on the top and we figured that was the best place to get views of the city. It was steep, but it wasn't a terrible climb for us since we live in a 5th floor walk up in Korea.

Like everywhere in Asia, the temple was super-crowded, but the views were pretty amazing.

After forcing strangers to take multiple pictures of us, until I got the "perfect" one. We descended the opposite side of the mountain towards the Forbidden City, which you can see behind us in the above photo.

According to wikipedia, "The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost five hundred years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

Built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 m² (7,800,000 sq ft). The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987, and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world."

The Forbidden city was huge and impressive and old. That's pretty much all I can say about it.

The Forbidden city can make you levitate.

One of many gigantic buildings in gigantic courtyards.

More FC.

After wandering through massive courtyard after massive courtyard, we exited the front of the FC. Where we saw the famous picture of Mao. We also found ourselves to be at the end of Tienanmen Square. If lots of cement and tourists excite you, you wont be disappointed there. After walking around aimlessly, we caught a cab and tried to go to one of the awesome restaurants that I researched before coming to China. Halfway there I realized that the restaurant I wanted was closed from 2-5 which would make it difficult for us to eat there at it was 3 pm. We somehow got the driver to go to another restaurant, close to our hotel, but realized that it was ALSO closed. As Bredan pointed out, at least now we knew the exact location of the restaurant, for future dining purposes.

Distraught, but not defeated, we ended up going to a steamed bun stand on the street. They are traditional Chinese steamed buns filled with meat and vegetables. Very tasty. Brendan had Beef and mushrooom and I had Chinese spare rib and cabbage. I probably would have ordered something else if I had known that they didn't take the meat off of the bone first! The neighborhood we were in is called Nanfujing Street...I think. It's an awesome little shopping district and many Christmas presents were bought there.

After hours of walking, wandering, and present buying, we made our way back to our hotel and rested up for the evening, where we planned the ultimate Chinese meal: Peking Duck. Like I said before, I did an insane amount of research before we went to China and one of my main goals was to find the best Peking Duck that China had to offer. Luckily, one of the greatest duck restaurants, Quan Ju De (King Duck) was in Houhai, fairly easy walking distance from our hotel. We got specific instructions from the hotel front desk on how to get there and started walking. We were in for a bit of a surprise. Apparently Houhai is one of the most popular nightlife spots on the city of Beijing and walking through the crowds there is like...black Friday shopping. Another obstacle, aside from the crowds, was our inability to read Chinese or figure out the addresses. We ended up circling the entire lake and walking up and down each side of it multiple times looking for the restaurant in the massive crowds. All the while, people standing outside of every restaurant and bar we pass are yelling, "Hello! Hello! you want Drink? You want have fun? Come here! Come here! Hey you!"

We searched for the restaurant endlessly. We were lost, hungry, grumpy and as usual in Asia, many of the tiny people were laughing at the giant blonde woman and the hairy faced man. Brendan worked up the nerve to ask a group of young Chinese girls how to get to the restaurant, they pointed to the other side of the lake. GAH! We walked over there, found nothing. I was beginning to give up hope. We circled the lake again, smushing through the crowds. I saw a restaurant that claimed to serve "Beijing Duck." I wanted to surrender and eat there but Brendan "didn't like the look of it." We pressed on, discussed giving up and decided to double back the way we came one last time. All of a sudden I saw the number 57 up ahead, the address of Quan Ju De! The crowds parted slightly and a large yellow duck sculpture appeared. We found it! Come to find out that the restaurant was in the basement of a large building, we took the elevator down and the doors opened up to a massive restaurant. We ended up ordering an entire duck between us with multiple sides. It was crispy and delicious. Served with sauces and small pancakes to be wrapped in. Certainly worth all of the frustration trying to find it. At the end of the meal they gave a certificate identifying which specific duck we had eaten. Interesting.

Peking Duck...mmmm