This weekend was an adventure. It started out with an intern trip with Celine and Dr. Tuggle to the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium. The aquarium was impressive, and the dolphin show made me feel like a kid. The rest of the zoo... not so impressive.
I have wanted all my life to see Giant Pandas in China. It wasn't anything like The Amazing Panda Adventure, one of my all-time-favorite movies from my childhood. The pandas at the zoo were behind fingerprint-blurred glass and seemed hot, dirty, and generally miserable. This was the case with most of the animals at the zoo. It was a depressing sight.
Saturday afternoon was the Great Wall Beach Party, an event that Annie and I heard about from Keith and jumped on immediately. Our tickets in hand, we arrived at WuDauKou to board the bus at 5p.m. on Saturday.
We knew we were in the right place when we saw hordes of 20-something foreigners with bags of pijiu, liquor, and mixers. We overheard someone saying that we could bring anything on the beach once we got there, so we stocked up from the 7-Eleven.
As soon as we got on the bus, a party organizer told us that we could NOT bring any food or drinks on the beach, but encouraged us to drink everything we had on the bus. Questionable advice.
The next four hours included personalities emerging from our bus mates as they became filled with liquid courage. They came from all over – the States, Belgium, France, Germany, Hong Kong, etc.
Once we finally got to the Great Wall, the air was filled with loud house music and the scent of the Yellow Sea. I took a dip in the sea, danced, failed at taking pictures, and had a genuinely good time. Annie managed to stay until the sun came up, but I couldn’t last that long.
I slept the whole way home on the bus and was directed back home by a couple of really nice Americans studying at a Beijing university.
The experience was great, and an article is to come.
The rest of Sunday was devoted to catching up on sleep and relaxing with online television. Happy Fourth of July everybody back home!
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