The Forbidden City!!!

So thats what we decided to do this past weekend, we went up to Beijing and saw the Forbidden City. Really it was just a bunch of old gates and thrones for the old chinese emporers, but it was pretty cool!!! We spent the morning there and only really say 1/3 of the place because it was so massive. but then we decided to go to the Silk Market. First we ate some Subway sandwiches, which were so so good... then we went around shopping. And i will never shop at the silk market again. I was looking at some.... well... i was looking at something for a christmas present for someone... and I wanted to know the price. They asked me to pick out the ones i wanted first and then tried to sell me the little collectio for 850yuan. i laughed and told them no... you could get it so much cheaper in Tianjin, so they they asked me what my price was and we told them what we could get them in Tianjin for and they just told us, those aren't real silk, this is real, very nice, we give you good price. i politely said no and tried to walk away... the women then grabbed my coat by my wrist and started to pull me back in... i kept telling her no, and tried walking away, i asked her to please let go of me... and she wouldn't... i finally yanked my wrist away from her and got away.. she then lowered the price dramatically to 200yuan but i was so angry i just kept walking. We looked around for a little bit but after about 30 minutes of crazy shop keepers we decided to just leave. When this lady saw us exiting the store she started screaming 100yuan... now that was more of the price i was looking for... but just because of the way she treated me i was so angry and ignored her (I didn't want to get thrown in a chinese prison for beating a little chinese girl up). I did get a really black and red chinese table runner though... and a sweet D&G purse that i love and adore. Samuel did some hard bargaining for that one. We were waiting for Elena right by a purse stand and i saw this purse that i really wanted. Samuel went over to check the price and the girl said 650yuan for this knock off purse. we responded with 75 yuan. She went down to 600 and we said 100. Then she says 500, and Samuel says 110, so she dropped it to 499 b/c we wern't going up very much. Samuel worked hard on her and couldn't get her down, so we started walking away and almost got on the elevator to leave and she said ok ok... how much is the max you will pay... and i said 100!! she was like "you just said 110" and we were like nope, 100!! she was pretty upset but we got it for 100 yuan!! hahaha!! but other than that, we can get everything cheaper here. The prices were just outrageous, and while we did good bartering on what we did get, i didn't like the way the treated us. So after that we jumped back on the high speed train to take the 30 min ride home, and just chilled for the rest of the day and watched Mighty Ducks... heck yeah!

We also got to go to a Chinese Wedding Feast, one of Samuels co-workers got married a couple weeks ago and they had a big dinner here in Tianjin (they got married in their hometown). We ate all kinds of wierd things (well... samuel did... i chose to not eat a lot of it) like fish skin and a pike (i think thats how you spell it, the fist) that looked like a baby shark with its intestines still attached... along with his head and tail, and other randomness. At least it wasn't the cow tongue samuel and Ma Ying made me eat last week. But it was interesting to see their traditions, and how much they drink and smoke at these events. The bride and groom have to have toasts with every table and the bride has to give and light a cigarette for everyone (samuel and i were an exception of course). and then samuels boses all came over and got drunk too... so it was a bunch of crazy drunk asians giving away lots of money. but it was cool.

as for other news from us, hopefully we hear from the business school this week or early next week. We are keeping our fingers crossed for that. I didn't get the Hall Advisor position, but that just means something there is something better for us. Samuel did get his job at the MTC back, He starts Dec 31st, when we get back from Virginia for Christmas. We are apartment Hunting right now which is a nightmare being here in China, but we have Kaitlin (my sis in law) looking at places for us so hopefully we will find something soon. And i am still looking for a job... so hopefully i can figure that out too!! Other than that we are almost on our way home... we have about 5 more weeks here... and still need to go to Beijing and see the great wall again, and our weekends are filling up fast with other things that need to be done.