Thai food and blue skies

Today was probably the nicest day in Beijing ever, or at least while I've been here. The sky was blue and it was pretty clear outside. I don't really understand how it went from disgustingly polluted to blue skies. Everyone here says the Chinese government controls the weather by shooting chemicals into the sky for holidays to make the sky blue. I wonder if this was one of those days.

Anyway, Alex went back to tutoring a woman from Inner Mongolia today and she invited us to have lunch with her, her husband and her friend. Alex told me and Sean to meet them at a corner because we thought we were going to her place to eat lunch. They showed up in a black volvo and got a cab for us and told the cab driver to follow them to a restaurant. Everything was fine until a black VW pulled in between us the Volvo. Somehow our idiot cab driver could not tell the difference and when the Volvo turned, the cab driver kept going and followed the VW instead. Neither Sean nor I speak Chinese and we did not know how to tell the driver to stop or turn around. We were both really flustered but luckily the VW was pulling off not far away into a parking garage, so we just got out and walked the rest of the way to look for their car.

So May, the woman Alex tutors, took us to this amazing Thai restaurant that is apparently pretty famous in Beijing. The menu was more like a magazine than a menu. It was filled with ads and it was hard to tell what you could order and what was an ad. We just let the husband order and it felt like it took half an hour for him to finish telling the waitress what to get. Eventually I figured out why, because they ordered tons of food. It just kept coming and all of it was so delicious. It's interesting to me that Thai food in America is pretty similar to Thai food in China (which I assume is similar to real Thai food in Thailand), however Chinese food in America is drastically different than Chinese food in China. There is no sweet and sour chicken or sesame chicken or any of the things you would normally associate with Chinese food. So who decided that these things would be considered Chinese food? At any rate, the food was delicious and we all tried Baijiu, a Chinese alcoholic drink that Alex thinks is disgusting but I thought tasted alright. Apparently whenever you want to drink, you hit the table with the bottom of the glass and everyone has to drink with you. So I guess everyone gets equally drunk? I am not sure. Luckily they were being cool with us and did not do that. May is a fashion designer and seems very cool. The funny thing is, she has no shame in telling people they are fat. She had emailed Alex while she was in the states asking if she was fat or skinny. Then today during lunch we were talking about Chinese food and I said I liked the noodles the best and she told me that noodles will make me fat, so if I don't want to be fat, I have to stop eating noodles.

After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven since it was a nice day and in theory, it would be a good day for photos of the sights. Unfortunately they are doing renovations and we could barely see anything since it was all closed off. Hopefully we will get to go back when it is done. Not far from the Temple of Heaven is the Pearl Market where you can buy all kinds of bargain goods. We walked through and it is hilarious to see how these Chinese girls attack people. They are all trained to say things like, "Special price for you!" "Beautiful lady, I give you low price!" "Cheaper for you!" We actually saw one British guy get pulled by three little Chinese women when he said he did not want to buy a bag. They kept physically pulling him back in and he kept trying to get out. They are vicious, but man it must get exhausting. We saw all the pearls and it's really overwhelming and a bit frustrating. I would really like to buy beads since they are so much cheaper here and you can bargain, but I do not know how to tell what quality things are and what price I should be paying. Any pearl/jade/coral experts out there?

Wednesday nights are Quiz Night at this bar called Bar Blu. Alex's friends have been going so we went to check it out. I have only been here a week and I felt so odd walking into a bar full of Americans, Brits and other foreigners. I have not seen that many white people in one place, it's so weird.

Anyway, I am tired and will upload photos tomorrow morning.