好久不见 : Chinese for "I am a slacker".

To be honest I never really liked spending a lot of time listening to people apologize for being away for so long, so I'm going to spare you a whole lot of explanation and blah blah blah, and cut to the chase: I'm back!  And I have a whooole lot more time now!  Let's start catching up on my life:

Trip to Beijing

As I mentioned long ago, I spent a weekend in Beijing with my friend Ross, which was far too short a time to really hit all of the sights, but enough to get a very basic feeling for the differences between Beijing and Xuchang.  And it really might as well be two different countries.

First, we stayed in a hostel a stone's throw** away from the forbidden city.  Not only did it come packed with warm rooms (which was amazing, and sorely needed), but you could also buy M&M's, Snickers bars, or even an omelette with cheese!  It was like Heaven on Earth.

Our desire for the western foods we so craved would not be so easily sated, however, and so we quickly made it to our first real, and very authentic, meal in the Capital of the Orient.  That's right, Pizza Hut.  Where we found not only "Authentic and Exotica Pizzas", but were served by a cute Chinese elf.  Delicious and adorable.

Our culinary pursuits of course were not limited to our long-lost cheese and sweets, however.  We also ate the famous Beijing Roast Duck in a fancy restaurant, and then made our way to a couple of the street markets, where there were lots of interesting things to eat.  And buy, if you're into that.

One of my favorites was the Purveyor Of Interesting Creatures On Sticks that we found in one of the  markets.  I really wish I had gotten better pictures or even a video of this guy's stock, because not only were there a great deal of Interesting Creatures (On Sticks!), but most of them were still wiggling!  It was awesome.  Needless to say I treated us to a nice stick of wriggly scorpions.  Yum!

(Unfortunately, I must clarify that the scorpions were not actually wriggling at the time of eating.  Off by about 10 seconds in hot oil!)

(Cultural experience trumps vegetarianism every time!  Do scorpions even count?)

This picture of Ross about to put strange things into his mouth is dedicated to his mother, who occasionally stops by here to read this blog.  Hi Mrs. Heath!

Surprisingly, in addition to eating, we also did some other stuff in Beijing, like going to Tiananmen square, and taking obligatory touristy pictures.  Hooray!

 

  

 

The rest of the trip, aside from the concert you've already heard about, turned out to be fairly uneventful, with the notable exception of me being lost by myself in the city afterwards, and wandering through a number of Hutongs from about 1am until 2:30am in the frigid, frigid evening.  Who says life isn't interesting?

For the rest of my interesting life, you will have to wait for the next post!  Let's all cross our fingers that will come sooner this time!


** - For the sake of literary accuracy, I feel I ought to qualify this statement by saying it would probably have to be a rather small stone, and even then, a pretty good throw, maybe from the roof.  Perhaps we should just be safe and say I have one of those Aerobie discs. I could definitely make it with that.  "An Aerobie's throw away™"!