Rest of Week 1

Okeday so as the tital implies, this basicly covers the last few days of Beijing 08 =P
Sooooooo for the last few days there has been a bit of veging at chris's watching more movies/TV series but food has been interesting. for one there was a pizza place that had MASSIVE pizza, like, its new york style (and sized pizza) like... it was hugely huge, so that was fairly epic (1 pizza feeding 3 ppl till we were full). Also went to TGI Fridays last night, another bit of good american meat and food and stuff (fried macaroie and cheeze) but yea. On the asian side of food, there is a mad hot pot place that i wish was back in Aus cos its mad in the way that each person get's their own pot of soup and its like doing a mini steam boat, kinda. good stuff. Also had some good food at a place called home away from home, usual asian stuff, though had thing mad chicken dish (not gona bother as its spelled in mando -.-) anddddddddd also went to a shanghi place which had fairly good dumplings
and yea

So thats been foody highlights (spread over the week). on the what we have been doing front...wednesday was basicly a blowout, so much wind that we basicly did nothing. so yea that was a bit of a cop out. Anyway, Thursday was an improvement, as while we still stayed inside it was because we were preparing for a thanksgiving party, so jus and I made a couple of apple crumbles, which actually turned out quite well, tho prob couldv done with more sugar. The party itself was fun, was at Chris's place so alot of his friends smoked, but it was still all good. Further they were almost all amreican so good to talk to people who understood everything i said. also had a couple of good stories and some of the guys were good to talk to, so a fun night overall, o yea and another thing, i never got thanksgiving as a holiday in america, so i heard a story about the origin of thanksgiving. So a guy Pat gets up and puts on the woody allen accent (drawling american accent with very articulated words). the short version is basicly when the americans first arrived in america, they befriended the indians (with feathers not dots) and invited the chief's family for dinner to help develope bonds between people. Unfortunately what the Americans didnt realise was that the Chief's family was his whole tribe, so when the Indians arrived, there wasnt enough food. Luckly for the americans the indians were good at hunting, so the chief sent out his hunters, and they came back with wild turky and there was food for all. And thus they ate and gave thanks, thus developing the holiday thanksgiving. Of course thats all rubish according to Chris's friends, basicly all thanksgiving was was that at the end of the American civil war, President Lincon decided that people need something to cheer them up, so declared a day of thanksgiving for peace, which has become the major american holiday to this day. I liked the first story better but thats just me. Also, the food for thanksgiving is just weird (traditional thanksgiving food). for one the turky, while quite normal in itself, the stuffing is like made of apples, and raisens, to the point it was super sweet, like it was nice, just realllllly odd. Further there is the sweeds (sweet potatos), again nothing unusaual about mashed sweet potatos but heres the thanksgiving twist, put the mashed sweeds in a pot cover them with marshmallows (no joke) and bake till the marshmallows are browned. Further is the pumpkin pie, which you may have heard off, is basicly exactly that, pie crust with rost pumpkin that has been whizzed up with heaps of sugar and cinamen untill it is sweet enough for the pie. like yea... weird stuff, but all really good and tasty (marshmallow sweeds were a personal favourite).

Anyway, Friday was taken up by the awsomeness of the Temple of Heaven, again another must see along with forbidden city, structuraly the place looks like all old chinese temple places, but the most epic thing about it all was that the entire structure is made of wood. Also while the place itself was great, the gardens that surounded the place were epicly awsome too, they have rows of massive cedar trees and all kinds of those kind of twiggy kul trees that make great shots along with sunsets. but yea, also alot less people wondering around the gardens, so its really tranquil and feels fairly untouristy (or we just got lucky).

Aaaaaaaaaand yea...that about covers it for what we have done... hoping to do the dirt markets and stuff over the weekend, one thing that has been disapointing this trip (appart from my failing at mando) has been the markets, the ones we have been to have all been fairly failing, mabe its just because they are always in your face, and you cant browse anything at all without them trying to get you to buy it. but yea.
thats it for now.