china

So, we are not in china....right now we are in Denmark, Copenhagen. i love it here...very beautiful.

ok brief updates...we were in china, ate lots of great food very very cheaply...stayed in a pretty cool youth hostel, enjoyed watching the game with lots of backpackers from all over the world. great fun.

sandie and I both visited the forbidden city, which I must say was a bit disappointing. Everything is under construction for the up coming Olympics. We both bought some great silk for our moms...yay for moms! Hopefully our moms will be making great things with the silk we bought.

The most exciting thing that happened was I GOT PICK POCKETED! This is very embarrassing to me because I consider myself very street smart and so I feel like a bit naive for it to happen. anyway I was walking around near Trainmen SQ. looking for our silk for moms when we were walking down a street and I was in a group of men and I guess sandie fell behind... they unzipped my bag and grabbed my passport holder that had the passport, money I couldn’t exchanged because it was so small...my WHO card(info of all my vaccinations from Peace Corps) and MY PLANE TICKET!!! then when I got to a corner I flung around, where my sunglasses case came out and I bent down to pick it up and one of the men kick it out of my reach. I then realized my bag was open....then I realized my passport holder was GONE! I thought it fell out. I then retraced my steps...3 x's. I then realized I had been pick pocketed...which I was in denial...but I knew that when people do this they grab the dough and then toss the rest...so I started looking in street alleys and garbage cans we got back to the "discovery" point and I saw the girl that was selling nuts on the corner and asked her in my animated way if she had seen a wallet...she pointed to the alley...THERE IT WAS minus all my lao, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thai money....which all equaled about 3 dollars!

I thought about returning and looking for this group of men and beating them....because Asian guys really aren’t that big. But o well. I got all my stuff back.

After that, sandie and I practiced getting pick pocketed...sandie is a good pick pocket it turns out...watch yourselves.

We went to the summer palace. We I forced sandie to buy a painting of a cat. Well not really but I didn’t make a purchase and sandie felt compelled to after the long time I spent with the shop keeper.

we visited the great wall...it was very hot and crowded.

Before we traveled up we bought some umbrellas to keep the sun away from our precious skin, so we went down a long line of vendors. Starting at 65 rmb and eventually haggling down to 8
rmb...sandie had the merchant wrapped around her arm to make the sale. Sandie was at one point yelping in pain from her grip.

a day before we had planned to leave for Germany the airline cancelled our tickets which caused us to be on the phone for more than 1 and 1/2 hours with Travelocity. Once sorted out we had a pretty scary ride with AEROFLOT. Not a good airline...actually horrible. I was amazed we landed in one piece. We had to stop over in Moscow. Sandie took lots of pictures of me sleeping on the floor in the airport. Not only have I taken after my mother in the photogenic area but I know am bordering narcolepsy. I sleep and am sleepy. We were slapped in the face on the rudeness in the aeroport.

We got to Germany, safe and sound...more to come.

-Jennifer