Saturday 8/28
Our new friend Yin Hao took us out to breakfast at McDonald's this morning and to my surprise they didn’t actually charge us American prices, instead I paid 14 kuai which is two dollars for a full meal. The Chinese really like corn, so of course they had to have that in the McDonald's as a side, but they also changed the apple pies to taro pies, they weren’t too bad actually. After that we all went to Yin Hao’s favorite grocery store, it was unbelievable! They had enormous barrels of rice, all kinds of dried fish, noodles and everything else. They also had a ton of different flavors of Pringles; seaweed, hot & spicy, cucumber, blueberry, crab, shrimp… I chose the blueberry ones, and they actually weren’t too bad, a good sweet and salty mix. Later we decided to see what the beach looked like, and we figured we should wear bathing suits just incase it was clean enough. Well… it wasn’t. It was atrocious! Babies peed and pooped everywhere, there was a ton of trash floating in the water and not even the locals were swimming in it. (By the way, most Chinese don’t put any under ware on their kids because it is socially acceptable to let them go potty on the street, or wherever they see fit.)
After trying to explore further we realized there was a really cool fort that was really close by. We walked all around it and discovered you needed to pay to get in, so we just saw the outside but it was really awesome! There are definitely some pictures of it in my albums. They also had some really cool street vendors that sold lighters shaped like guns and other silly things. Today was extremely hot though so we figured it would be best to just head back to the hotel and rest for a bit and get some lunch. Later we figured we should learn the bus system and get a few things at the local trust mart (china’s walmart). IT WAS HUGE!! We met a girl in there that showed us her favorite beers and which ones had the most alcohol in them. (China does NOT sell beer with an alcohol content of over 4.3%, which is ridiculously low.) She showed us one called iCool, and she added, “It promises you a cool summer.” They also had some really awesome bottles of liquor some in strange shapes, one being a horse where you poured out the drink from its ass.
On the way back we discovered there was a BEAUTIFUL temple right outside the south gate to Xiamen University. There were huge crowds and a bunch of Asian tourists all wearing the same shirts or hats. It was seriously difficult to get out of the temple gates, but it was cool non-the-less. We are definitely exhausted from today’s adventures so at the moment we are watching Chinese propaganda (the only thing on tv) while eating some amazing ramen noodles, I will never feel the same about ramen noodles again- Chinese ramen is SO delicious!
