First full day in Beijing

So today was my first full day in Beijing and it's been good. Alex, Sean (other subletter) and I went around to get acclimated to the areas. We went to a cute little market across the street from the apartment where we saw all kinds of cool stuff like teas, beans, seaweed, dried seahorses and snake, and weird clothes. I took a ridiculous amount of photos. Things I ate included really yummy smoked meat. Don't ask me what kind it was, but it was good. I also tried some red thing that looked and tasted like a date and the big adventure food today was jellyfish. I can't really describe it, it's seafoody and slimy with a bit of a crunch. Probably not something I would have again, but it didn't kill me.

After the market we went by the Forbidden City but didn't really hang out there. I saw quite a few Chinese mullets . . . seems like a big thing here. The sky is a permanent beige, so I think we are going to go back on a day when the sky is blue, although I am not sure when that will happen. The smell here reminds me of Cairo, I wonder if all super polluted cities smell this way.

We walked through an area of hutongs which from what I understand are alleyways where Chinese people live. They are tearing these down and turning them into apartment buildings, which kind of sucks. We walked into another market where they were selling all kinds of weird things, like various bugs on sticks. The creepiest thing was that there was a scorpion on one stick that was still moving. The stick was stuck all the way through it and it's little claws were still squirming. If I had not already been turned off by eating scorpion, that pretty much did it for me there.

We went to lunch at a little Chinese place where we paid a ridiculous price for Green Tea. Meaning, we paid $3.50 instead of $1.25. The prices here are wild. We went to this market that has a bunch of fakes but also some good stuff and it's amazing how much you can talk things down. This woman was asking $18.75 for a lamp and Alex talked her down to $3.75 and we ended up not wanting to buy it anyway.

Went grocery shopping and saw that they have Oreos among other American foods. We also went to this place called April Gourmet and it has Ritter Sport chocolates (Thank you THFers for getting me some, but apparently I can get it here too!).

We had dinner at a southern Chinese restaurant and I have noticed that my biggest problem with Chinese food, that I was not expecting, is the salt factor (or MSG). Almost everything is ridiculously salty. Unfortunately it's one of those things I do not want to get used to. I am fine getting used to eating foods I would not normally eat, but preservatives and saltiness in my food I don't count as a good change.

So that was today . . . I am trying to learn some Chinese phrases but it is taking me a while. I also took lots of photos today, so check them out in my gallery.