So after the amazing time I had in Japan, I ended up in Beijing with some rain pouring down like cats and dogs. I got in to my hostel around 23:00 and lucked out big time with some cool room mates. There was two boys, a Melbourne Oz tradie named Scottie Torrence, a Frenchman named Maximus, and a cool South Korean girl name Jee Hyundai Hur who spoke Chinese. We all kicked it off quite well and had a good time together traveling around and having dinner. Scottie and I went on adventures all over the city, Qiamen square, Hutongs-alley in Chinese, Tianmen Square, and the Olympic Park before meeting up with Max the next day to catch a train to Badaling, which is where the Great Wall is. The Great Wall is purely amazing and is much bigger than you think that shoots out over the mountains as far as the eye can see. After all the adventures we shared, the three of us split up and I went to the crazy North railway station to head out to Xi'an, where the Terra Cotta warriors are. Which turned about to be jam packed like New Delhi, because there was so many people trying to catch trains and sleeping on the ground and after waiting in line for a good half an hour, I was told that the trains are all sold out for Xian and Shanghai. I was like: " f " and then had to find a new hostel for a couple nights before flying to Hong Kong which I could have flown but lead me to meeting new really cool people.
So I found a really cool Hostel and met some very interesting characters that are good friends now. I met an another OZ New Zealander, Elijah Sheppard who programs, and a cool American student, Arthur Thompson, whose a crazy good linguist in over five different languages. We hung out for a couple days together, Elijah and I, and went around to all the places I didn't see, Summer Palace and Sanliton and what he hadn't seen as well which was the Summer Palace as well. I also went out for an adventure through the Temple of Heaven gardens and was pretty amazed, but similar to the Summer Palace.
As for Arthur and I, we had so many goofy sound making linguist expressions in all sorts of languages, because I am a character when it comes to making sounds and languages as well.
We had some really good times laughing till our stomachs hurt and also made the Chinese hostel workers/guests have a laugh as well. I then headed out to for a new adventure into Hong Kong.
Some thoughts:
You'll find me talking with a Chinese taxi driver for twenty minutes not understanding a word he is saying and he's also not understanding a word I'm saying in where I want to go. I started to laugh and he smiled with probably telling this same story to his friends. I finally got in the car and just used hand gestures of where to go and we ended up where I needed to go. I thanked him so much and what I was saying to him in Chinese: "dongsee", was actually: "Dongshuuuu".
So if your ever in a lost in translation moment, slow your roll, be calm, put yourself in their shoes of what they would do, hand signals, map pointing, GPS configuring and you'll be just fine.
That was definitely a highlight and hope more awkward moments arise of language barriers because then you or I will learn the language better from an experience that your stuck in.
Enjoy the pics...
Bye for now...
Little girl outside of Qianmen Station near Tianmen.
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