Monday, July 09, 2007

A Brief Recap

Janet and I spent this past weekend exploring Tianjin and I've added some new pictures from our trek.

With only a map, phrasebook and bottle of water we set out Saturday morning to explore the area to the south of the school. We found the Tianjin TV Tower, that looks somewhat like the Seattle Space Needle and bought tickets to visit the observation deck. The tower offered a great view of the nearby area, though visibility was limited due to smog. On the top deck we were standing 270 meters (or almost 900 feet) above the city. There was a small "sky walk" platform that extended out from the tower and had a glass floor. While the view of the street below was interesting, we decided to stay on the relative safety of the tower.

Our other major accomplishment of the day was learning (somewhat) how to navigate the bus system in Tianjin.

The two major activities on Sunday were a visit to Ancient Culture Street and the Tianjin Wal-Mart.

Culture Street is a big shopping area where you can find all types of traditional Chinese wares from silk and jade to tea sets and swords, they have just about anything a tourist could want. If anyone wants a tourist edition of Mao's "Little Red Book," just let us know.

Once we noticed Wal-Mart a few blocks away, we had to make a stop there as well. The first floor was a giant supermarket with everything from sea weed to mystery fruits (see pictures). The second floor held all of the home wares and really low priced clothing. Janet picked up a pair of shirts for about $4. Despite the extremely crowded conditions, our shopping experience at Wal-Mart here was probably a bit more pleasurable than the ones back home.

Today it was back to classes and the regular week routine. Wanting a little variety from the Chinese food on campus, we went to a nearby Thai restaurant with a couple of other friends. We had a communal style meal of Thai noodles, vegetables, curry chicken wings, spring rolls, and some type of very spicy soup that only warranted two peppers (out of a maximum three) on the menu. As we get to explore a little more of the city I think we are both looking forward to trying out some new places and different types of food.

Overall, it has been a busy past few days and we've managed to get by well enough despite the communication barrier. Its interesting to have the experience of being more or less illiterate and hearing small children on the streets communicate better than we can. We'll continue to take it one character at a time and slowly chip away at the language.

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