How on earth I got to my 46th post is beyond my comprehension. I am also nearing 1600 photos from the entire trip, so that's pretty cool.
Anyway, back to today. I had my morning Chinese class (perfect tingxie, new vocab, talent show discussion, and movie), and then I had a really fun lunch conversation with Matthew and Philina. We talked about religion and politics, and it was awesome to compare ideas and opinions in such a relaxed and accepting way when we differed so much. I ate vaguely Asian chicken from the western food part of the cafeteria. It's chicken with Asian flavored sauce, vegetables, and rice, served with a spork. Then we had an hour break before the TCM field trip when I checked e-mail, YouTube, and took care of some computer business.
Our TCM field trip took us back to the hospital for a lesson in Tuina or massage/chiropractics. We were told to wear our lab coats again, which is always fun because we look like doctors, but then it didn't matter because we were in the classroom instead of the clinic. It was a very fun lesson because we had a Power Point (Chinese professors LOVE to use PowerPoint and they call the slideshows ppts after the way the files are saved), but each slide was a description of the motion and we just learned the different massage strokes and tried them out on ourselves and each other. My partner was really good at it, so I was very lucky!!
On the bus ride back and extending for about an hour, I had a high quality conversation with Matthew again. I continued one of our topics from earlier, but then it morphed into a conversation with food, and then we talked about personal philosophies, experiences and impressions of Beijing, and some really cosmic stuff. It was fantastic, and I am so happy to have had this conversation.
Tonight was take two of going to the puppet theater, but alas it was another failed attempt. We had a notecard with the name of the place and some directional hints written in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English so we could work with the taxi driver, and he was fantastically nice, but he couldn't find the place, so after driving around for a while, we had him drop us near the subway stop. We asked for directions from the guard, the tourist center, and the ticket counter for the park, and they kept pointing in the same direction, so we knew we were walking the right way. Then, all of a sudden, we found a big sign for it on the outside of the temporary metal wall surrounding a construction site that had an arrow, so we walked around the construction site, past the sweet potatoes and stinky tofu, and couldn't find it. We asked one of the construction workers and he said it was inside, but we had to enter through the other opening to the site, so we went back the way we came.
We found it! Except there was no show tonight. The woman from the theater told us there will be a show at 10AM tomorrow, and we asked about some scheduling and didn't buy tickets because of class. She was so kind and let us look around the building, and it was amazing. They have a museum component with both modern and 300 year old puppets, information about how the puppets are made, and so many puppets of all sizes. It was so wonderful to look through. She spoke only Chinese, and I understood most of it, which was also really cool. I ended up buying a ticket for tomorrow morning's show with the encouragement of my friends because this is such an important experience for me, and the Chinese class I am skipping will not be a big deal to miss and I can teach myself what I need to know for the final. Having this particular experience is more important than going over new vocabulary I won't have a chance to use, and I haven't missed a single class this whole time, so I do feel a tad guilty, but it's cosmically okay.
We left the puppet theater happy to have at least located it, and ended up taking a lovely walk through the neighboring Yuanmingyuan Park. It was a beautiful park with gorgeous lakes filled with lilies and lotus. They were actually having a lotus festival, and the park was one of the most well maintained nature settings in all of Beijing. The lakes had bridges that were absolutely beautiful, there were lots of cats running about, and we even saw a frog in the grass. It was certainly not a lost evening to have a walk in a park with good friends and good conversation.
We took the subway back, I went to the c-store for a beverage and ice cream before heading to my room to regroup, and then I went to bed, excited for the puppet show that I will see tomorrow!
Today is awesome because I had amazing conversations, learned massage, found a new park, and located the puppet theater.
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