The Summer Palace and Anya

2011 7-24-10 (for 21^st)

Up at the crack of dawn (which I have a feeling will begin to be a common affair with father around), which was mostly spent just relaxing and talking with some of the people in the hostel.  So far we've met an older couple from Belgium, one of them is an art history teacher (and kind of an art "activist") the other runs the most successful sitcoms in Northern Belgium which has ran for about 20 years!  Then there are about three people from Norway, two of whom were on the last leg of their Trans-Siberian adventure.  We of course also have the three or four Chinese who are running the hostel, they're super friendly.

Then in comes this bushy ball of energy overloaded with two backpacks and plenty of gear.  Apparently she had walked past the hostel four or five times before she actually turned down the right alley to our hostel.  Well after unpacking herself in her room we invited her over to talk.  Her name is Anya Rudycheva, from Moscow, majoring in Celtic languages, but is conversational to fluent in Russian, English, Spanish, "Celtic", and a little bit of Italian.  She makes money doing translations for various websites and such which she says pays for her traveling but not much else.

Anyways she was just in Beijing for the day with no real plans so we quickly absorbed her into our group and headed out to meet Booz for lunch.  Lunch was a tasty affair at one of Booz's local restaurants; we had some delicious eggplant, fried rice, and sweet and sour chicken.

Once our more basic needs were taken care of we got into a cab and were whisked off to the Summer Palace.  The place was pretty well packed; apparently this time of year is a major one for Chinese tourism.  But it was rather pretty and there were plenty of cool buildings to see as well as an awesomely big lake.  Booz and I decided that a giant Dragon Boat would be an excellent addition to White Rock Lake.  Sadly the experience was rather… "drowned out" by these stupid whistles people we're selling.  It seems like everywhere I go people are selling things.  But regardless it was fun, Anya, Booz, and I even did a little bit of hiking up to the top of the mountain where a huge Buddhist temple was.  And by hiking I mean we took then small dirt path up to the top, only to find out there was a much nicer and easier one that we had somehow missed.

As always coming back from there was a royal pain.  We couldn't find a taxi that wasn't full and we really didn't know where the subway was, so in the end we hired a couple of bicycle guys to take us to the subway.  Well Booz clearly negotiated a price of 20RMB, and that price was communicated to the other driver and so when I got out I paid 20RMB and I was done with it.  BUT Booz and Anya gave the original driver a 100RMB and suddenly the ride was 20RMB PERPERSON.  Needless to say we were pissed and after 10 mins of arguing we finally got it down to 30RMB for the ride and we were too continue.  This was the first time that this had happened to me who made it even worse.  Normally all of the Chinese people I've dealt with honor the deal that was made 100% we've even been ran down by a waiter because we didn't get our 3RMB worth of change.  So I was rather peeved but whatever I guess.

So we made our way back to the hostel and Anya retired to her room (she had been on a plane from Russia before this as well as the hiking to get to our hotel, so I imagine she was royally tired after all of this).  Father, Booz, and I ordered some dinner and just in general hung out for the rest of the night before Booz had to get back to school.