August 7, 2007

So what has been happening lately? When I was about to write this entry, I first thought to myself that not much has happened. But now, as I start thinking about what's been happening in the past week quite a bit has happened.

I guess we can start with any trips that I've made. For the most part, I've just been mozying it around the city in Beijing. I recently went to the US embassy in Beijing. Wow, it was amazing how safe I felt there. Even though I was in China, when I was at the embassy, I was in a completely different world. For instance, they had freaking toilets and marble sinks! I know that this might not sound much to anyone, especially freaking TOILETS, but for here in China, this was a big step. At the embassy, I was surprised to find a Starbucks. I was planning to get some Starbucks there, but they wouldn't let me in. I guess it's only for employees who work there. Inside the embassy at the waiting area for US citizens, I for the most part felt like I was in a doctor's office waiting room. It was basically this really small room where people just sat and filled forms then spoke to people behind glass. When I went there, I just wanted to check it out, but surprisingly I found something to do there where I figured out some details about some advice they had for me when I was living in China that somehow no one in PRIME new about. Let's see here. First, do NOT carry a passport with you in China unless you are travelling or going somewhere like the US embassy. Apparently a US passport is fetching about 8,000 RMB (~ $1,100). That I think is a large sum, especially in China. Second, we should've registered at the embassy that we were in the area so that they could notify us if something was happening in the area, or maybe if they needed to find us. I think it's interesting how people overlook these things. Something I never really thought about it while I was there though was how many newborns were there. I think I saw at least three families with newborns that were born in China. I honestly wonder how much trouble it is to register them. But, for one thing, it was funny how even the newborns were tagged as "Visitor". Every single person that was a US citizen visitor had one of those sticky name tags that you just place on your shirt with an ID number. And on these babies, that I hear are only about 1-3 weeks old, have one of those tags right on their back or on their butt. I would've gladly taken a picture, but sad to say, they wouldn't allow us to bring phones or cameras into the embassy. I actually heard that we weren't supposed to bring water from outside, but we still brought it. haha Anyways, onto security at the embassy. For one thing that I was wondering, I thought it was interesting how there was a marine that checked us in to the office. I would think that it would be an army personnel. And around the embassy, there weren't really any US soldiers; actually Chinese soldiers. I thought that was interesting since you would expect the US to be paranoid enough to only allow US soldiers patrol the embassy perimeter.

But it was pretty funny how the Chinese soldiers were at the US embassy and the district. First of all, the soldiers there were extremely different from the ones I saw at Tian'an men square. They were definitely more polished and formal (not surprising since it was the embassy area). We basically saw two different types of Chinese soldiers at the U.S. embassy. The first soldier that we spoke to had a big smile on his face when we were asking how to get through the area. The second group was actually just around the corner and they were in this small random post thing. There were three of them that just stared straight ahead at the streets and didn't flinch at all. When I first saw them, they looked like statues; to imagine them think about those British soldiers that supposedly don't move. Getting closer to them, I saw that they all had semi automatic guns that they were holding in their hands. Acting like myself when I saw them (odd) I was able to get some of them to have their eyes shift to look at me! WOOT WOOT! HAHAHA So that's the U.S. embassy part.

Onto other parts of the embassy district. So I was able to see different embassies there, obviously. I was able to see the Cuban embassy! HAHA Cuban soil. I was actually able to get a picture of their embassy.So this is a picture of the gate to their embassy. From this picture, you probably can't really see the embassy.

So here's a close-up picture of their sign, just to prove I was there. Anyways, while I was there, I really wanted to just walk into their embassy and say that I've been on Cuban soil. Then possibly Bush and his administration could subpoena me. Hey, since I got subpoenaed by the RIAA, I might as well get subpoenaed by our own government just to prove a point. But showing that I'm here, I didn't go.

Anyways, here's another picture of another embassy that I saw there.
Yeah, pretty cool embassy I thought. If anyone could tell me the name of the country for this embassy, that would be great.
Here's a close-up of the sign for this embassy.

I would've gotten more pictures of the embassies, but then the next one I tried getting a picture of, the Nicargua embassy, the Chinese soldier there apparently received a phone call when I was about to take a picture and told me to go away or something like that. So basically, I got scared of the Chinese commies like the American tourist I am and was too scared to take anymore pictures since I think that they called all the soldiers in the area about me. haha Well, back to the Nicaragua embassy, it was quite obvious that it was from a poor country since the embassy looked really crappy compared to the others.

While I was there, I was FINALLY able to eat some American food in the area. Walking along the road, I noticed some people nearby that I remembered were at the U.S. embassy with us, and I asked them where to eat. They were nice enough to walk us to some restaurant; I honestly forgot the name of the restaurant. So the mother I was talking to told me that she's been in China for a couple years while her husband had some sort of sabbatical in China for psychology. I thought that was quite interesting. Her boy I honestly thought had ADD. He was pretty funny though. He would try to tell me something, but then he would just totally stammer in mid-speech and forget what he was saying. Back to the food, I got some Cajun pasta that was good. I was really tempted to get some pie there, since they had at least 10 different types of American pie there (apple, cherry, cream, cheesecake...). It's surprising how much I've taken granted for in the U.S. Well in the end, I decided not to get any, and I changed my mind to get some brownie. Shoot, now that I think about it, I should've taken a picture of it before I ate it. Oh well, too late now; but all I got to say about it is that it was GOOD!

So that's it for my embassy trip.