Four S's

I checked off a lot of things off of my 'to do and see in Beijing' list this weekend. On Friday afternoon, our school sponsored a field trip for us to see the Beijing Opera. I have tried to think of something positive to say about it and all I could come up with is that they have very colorful costumes. I'm glad that I got to see it in order to form my own opinion, but I will never sit through something so painful to listen to again!

Friday night I finally made it to two of the most famous weird food streets in Beijing. I lined my stomach with a few Jameson's and pepto-bismals before arriving. Before trying any food, I needed a beer in hand to wash the foods down because the foods for sale in the market were crazy! I didn't realize that the vendor had already opened my beer, and I accidentally knocked it down, spilling it all over the skewered sheep's penis just to the right of the picture. That will definitely go down as something I never thought I would do!

I ate snake first. It was very chewy and didn't taste like anything in particular, but overall not horrible. The silk worm came next. It was crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside. The picture is not a good one of me, but it accurately captures my reaction to my first and only bite! As soon as I bit through the crunchy shell, I started to gag. I chugged my beer to try and wash it down but couldn't do it. I threw up just a little bit near the food stand, and then once again at the edge of the street. I was teary eyed and had hard bits of silk worm shell stuck in my teeth. It was absolutely disgusting! Please, do not ever eat silk worm. I don't know how anyone could actually enjoy it!

We proceeded to another food stand where we tried sea horses and scorpions. The scorpions were still alive on the skewer before they were fried. They were actually pretty tasty. I'm not sure if you're supposed to eat the stingers, but I did. Ashley, Chloe and I were sharing the sea horse and I was the lucky one who got to eat the head. It brought back terrible memories of the salt water aquarium and sea horses that I had as a child. It was not that pleasant, but no where near as difficult to swallow as the silk worm! There was no rabbit tongue for sale at the market. Apparently you have to travel farther south to get that. So, when Mom comes to visit in February, she's in for a treat! I think we'll order the whole rabbit head to share!

On Saturday, Chloe and I ventured to Zhoukoudian, about two hours southwest of Beijing by bus, to see the Peking Man museum and dig sites. It was a very modern museum and had great information on all of the archaeological finds in China. The former dig sites were mostly in caves that are now open to the public. It was so cool to be able to walk through and picture our ancestors of up to 700,000 years ago living there. At the Peking Man site, the first evidence of man-made fire was found. I decided to try and do my own archaeological dig outside of one of the caves just in case they might have missed a tooth, skull cap or something. I didn't find anything.

I was at a nearby 24 hour cafe at 5 AM this morning to watch the Florida game on our laptops. I recruited people from Korea, Austria, Brazil, Denmark and England to watch the game with me and two other American guys. It was a lot of fun for us to explain the game to them. Unfortunately, once it was clear that Florida was not going to win, I was too frustrated to talk to them! I spent the rest of today hibernating and mourning the loss in my room.

I can't believe it's already December the 6th! How time flies when you're having fun!