Adventures in the city

Our Lazers have been stowed away and exchanged for street clothes as Team USA took to the streets of Beijing. On the first day, I met up with my mom, my friends Brittany and Garth, and my coach Peggy to take a taxi into Southern Beijing. After a much needed stop at Starbucks, we ventured into a side street where the street vendors were selling scorpions and seahorses (among unidentified meat on a stick) to eat! (see first picture) Despite our intentions to try scorpion, our stomachs changed our minds after seeing them displayed.

Next we were off to the incredible Silk Market where there are 7 floors of packed booths and aggressive sellers accosting you to buy their polo shirts, fake designer dresses and handbags, pearls, jade, make-up, silk and just about any Chinese trinket you can imagine. Once we got the hang of bargaining and the conversion rate, we discovered how inexpensive you could buy everything. So, like good tourists, we stocked up on items and left with almost too many bags to carry.

We took a short break from shopping in the real Chinatown, to have an authentic (and delicious!) Chinese lunch where I even got the hang of chopsticks despite my quad hands. Then it was off to some Beijing neighborhood alleys where we got caught in the rain and had some trouble catching a taxi back to the village.


On day 2 of exploration, we were committed to see more of the culture and less of the shopping. Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven which is an enormous park with scattered temples that were used for worship. We were fascinated by the incredible number of Chinese people who were dancing, kicking a hackey-sack, dancing with a badminton, singing, playing instruments or just walking together. A few times we even had Chinese people come up and start asking me questions (with Brittany translating!) about my favorite Chinese food, how I was injured and how I raced. The temples were gorgeous and since they were on hills (see Garth pushing up a very non-ADA-approved ramp), they gave a view of much of the surrounding city. I could have spent all day exploring there, but we left for lunch at a Peking duck restraunt where I was peer pressured into eating duck brain (tastes like chicken but I almost gagged from the texture). Then it was time for a taxi back to the village to prepare for Closing Ceremonies!