Some pics from today

So today I saw some of the sights in Seoul with my fantastic tour guide, Ben Moon. We shopped in several of the typical Korean department stores, went to Deoksugung Palace, saw the view of the city from the top of a building, and had dinner in a very cool area of Seoul which I forget the name of. Seoul is HUGE. We walked all around today and just saw one small area of the city. Here are some pics!


This is me with one of the guards at Deoksugung Palace

more guards

lunch

snack

I thought these t-shirts were hilarious!

cool building in area where we had dinner

One Chick in Korea

The blog is alive! I'm here in Korea for work - I arrived yesterday afternoon in Seoul. So far Korea is really nice - it seems very modern and clean. My hotel is very cool - it has a pool, driving range, tennis court, basketball court and even a heliport on the roof. Last night I walked to the mall in an effort to stave off the jet lag, and had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the world, Marche Movenpick. Unfortunately the food was a little different than it was at the location in Toronto that I used to go to all the time, and I coudn't figure out what a lot of it was. Oh well! It tasted pretty good anyway.

My meetings start tomorrow, so today I am going to check out the city with my friend Ben from college, who lives here. I'll try to post some pics later!!

Pictures are coming....

We are still working on getting the pictures up and online. Why you might ask? Well, it turns out that we took over 2400 pictures on this trip!!! The curse of the digital camera, it seems. Anyway, in the meantime, please enjoy this article - http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/17/asia/web-0417china.php

I thought this was pretty interesting. We definitely saw (and heard!) the spitting, and experienced the absence of queueing. However, as the article says, they must be working it, as Jess commented that things seemed to have improved since she was in Beijing last year.

We'll have those pics up soon, I promise! Keep checking here for updates!

We're Back!!!

We've arrived safely home a few hours ago. Luckily we had no airline mishaps today, although the entire trip home did take us about 24 hours. We are pretty tired!!! Today's miracle was that we did not have pay for having extra or overweight luggage, even though we had a ton of it. The guy next to us in the check-in line kept laughing at us, saying "you have so many suitcases!" The second miracle was being able to eat salad again. I have to say that I missed lettuce and tomato quite a bit. And all of you, of course! Hope to everyone soon. More pictures to come once we have rested and our brains are operational again.

Our 14 Hour Trek to Hong Kong

So, yeah.  It took us over 14 hours to get to Hong Kong. Long story, but it involved 2 missed flights, several buses, a loooong taxi ride and two chaotic border crossings.  Luckily we also encountered some helpful, english-speaking strangers to help us out.  Anyhow, we made it here finally and we have to say that Hong Kong is AWESOME!!!!  We love it!  We had drinks today at a bar which I swear must have the best view in the world.  It was incredible!  

 

OK we have to go the internet here is very expensive!!  We'll try to write again soon!  Bye!!!

Shanghai!

Hello everyone!  We are in Shanghai!   We apologize for the sparse blog postings, it is sometimes hard to get on the internet here.

 

So far we have found Shanghai to be more modern and westernized than Beijing.  We have even come across some western toilets in public places - quite the surprise!   We have been eating our fill of Chinese food, but last night we just needed something familiar, so we hit up Pizza  Hut, which turned out to be great!  Pizza Hut is pretty fancy here, they even have pasta dishes and ice cream sundaes, which we took advantage of, of course!

 

Today we visited the Old Section of Shanghai, which as usual consisted of some very pretty gardens and about a million little shops selling everything you can imagine, and some that you probably could not until you saw it.  Yesterday we visited the Shanghai Museum, the Bund (walking area along the river), and Nanjing Road Shopping Area, which reminded us of Times Square (lots of neon, tons of people, etc)  The first night we were here, we saw a Chinese acrobat show, which was amazing!  It had contortionists, plate spinners, knife throwers, a magician, jugglers, and crazy acrobats that did incredible feats.  Somehow we ended up with front row seats even though we only bought our tickets a few hours beforehand.  Hmm.....and on Tuesday we went on a day trip to Suzhou ("the Venice of the East") organized for us by Jess's mom, who accompanied us on the tour.  We experienced first-hand the insane amount of traffic here (yes, I think it was worse than the Beltway and certainly included way more horn-blowing)  and saw some beautiful gardens, took a boat trip, and visited the silk factory, where of course we were conned into buying more silk.  Anyone want some silk?  Please contact us when we get home. 

 

Tomorrow we are off to Hong Kong, our last stop (sniff!).  We hear it is pretty warm there, which we are excited about.  So far it has been much colder than we expected in Beijing and Shanghai, and we are really tired of wearing the same clothes all the time, since most of us only brought two warm outfits.  We hear it has been around 80 degrees in DC, so we are very jealous of you all back home!  Think good thoughts and send us some sun in Hong Kong!  

 

Lots of love from China, talk to you soon!

Beijing: Got Silk?

We do! Lots of it! We have gone a little crazy with the shopping here. Silk, pearls, fake clothes, purses, etc, its crazy! And its all so cheap! I think we are becoming master bargainers. A few of us (not naming names!) have had to buy new suitcases already even though we are only on our first city!

Anyway, we didn't spend all of our time shopping. We also saw a bunch of the historic sites here. Let's see, we've done the Forbidden City, Ti'anenmen Square, some parks, the hutong, and of course the Great Wall, which was really cool. Today we went to the Lama Temple, which was really neat as well. Lots of Buddha's and incense burning everywhere.

Ok this has to be quick today b/c I am on the hotel internet and it is pretty expensive. Here are some pics - Ok whatever the pics are above. Blogger does not seem to like operating in China!! Tomorrow we are off to Shanghai - hope all is well in the states!

BTW our new Chinese phrases of the day are: Xishou jian zi na li (where is the bathroom) and wi an ni (I love you), taught to us by a cab driver who was in love with Jess.

We're in China!!!

Hey everyone! We've arrived in Beijing safe and sound. We got here yesterday afternoon and walked around a little bit. We were pretty tired, and managed to order some food successfully at a Chinese restaurant. However we weren't as successful ordering drinks. The "apple juice" we thought we were getting turned out to be some eckto-plasmic green colored apple soda. Mmm, tasted like a jolly rancher. Also, cauliflower is really brocolli here.

Jess and Danielle couldn't sleep and went exploring at 3 am. Yes, the stores are open then! Phan and Kristin slept for 12 hours.

Today we went to the Forbidden City, Tianenman Square and Jingjong (?) Park. We saw the big picture of Mao (although I have to say it was smaller than I thought it would be), dressed up in Chinese costumes for a picture, and successfully dealt with several squatty potties. And as you can tell, we found the internet cafe, although that was a bit of a challenge. So far Danielle is the best bargainer amoung us so we are looking to her to help us get good deals on all the stuff.

We are here in Beijing for four more days, so we'll write more later. Hopefully at some point we can upload some pictures, although the computers in this cafe are locked in a cage-like contraption, so it won't happen today unfortunately.

Here are some observations about Beijing so far:
- They have a lot of really pretty, colorful flowers lining the streets. But then we realized they are actually fake.
- Men seem to carry purses here.
- Every store generally has around one salesperson per square meter.
- Pedestriains do NOT have the right of way. Luckily we all still have all of our limbs although Phan almost got taken out by a biker earlier today.
- We love dumplings and noodles!!!
- We have learned a little Mandarin, such as "no ice!" and "I don't want it!"
- People like to stare at our blond hair and even try to take pictures with us. We feel like celebrities!

Hope all is well back in the US! More updates soon! Zia jian!

First Post!

We created this blog so that we can post our adventures in China while we're there! Hopefully there will be internet access there so we can post updates and maybe even pictures. Me, Phan, Danielle and Jess leave on Tuesday! We are getting very excited!