23. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Happy Birthday Ilana! Yesterday was my birthday. I opened my big present from Alex (my brother) first thing in the morning. It was a really cool 2008 Olympics backpack with one of the Olympic characters on it.

My dad had to stay at the conference until 5:30 pm, so we asked Monica if she wanted to go around with us. Again we went to the shopping district and Tian’anman square. It was pretty much the same thing as last time at the square except more crowds–lots, and lots of people everywhere. Everybody was taking pictures of me and wanted me in their pictures because they’ve never seen anyone with blond hair. I thought it was pretty odd when somebody asked my mom if we wanted to go to the museum with him–we didn’t go.

At lunch time, we found a little dumpling house that was a small little room on a side street. The entire menu was in Chinese and the man only spoke a few words of English. This was definitely not a tourist restaurant. Luckily my dad printed out cards that have the symbols for foods like chicken, beef, and fish. My mom pointed to the chicken, he nodded his head no. She pointed to the beef and he said beef dumplings. My mom said yes and ordered 2 plates. We had no way of knowing how many dumplings come in two orders, so we ended up with an estimate of 25 dumplings on each plate. That’s a lot of dumplings! We must have been hungry because we ate all but three of them. Alex only ate one, I ate about six, and Monica and my mom ate the rest. Later we were glad we got there so early because the place was piling up with buisness men on their lunch break.

Later, Alex got hungry so we took him out to a little outside marketplace. Luckily there are no bugs flying around in China. He got a plate with six pieces of ham on it. My Mom had a beer and I had a soda. We went home and went to sleep–we ended up sleeping 14 hours! Unfortunately, we all slept through my birthday dinner, so we’re going to have my dinner tonight.

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22. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Today we went to Tian’anmen Square, the largest town square open to the public in the world. It was a big empty square of concrete with a fence around it. There were some statues there, but all taken up by tourists surrounding them and taking pictures of people next to the statues. There were so many people there surrounding and swarming the square it was hard to walk around.

Once we left there we went to Wangfujing Avenue at the shopping district. I saw so many stores including the 2008 Olympics store. Tomorrow, the 23rd, is my birthday. Alex really, really wanted to buy my birthday present from him there. Alex went looking, picking out what they were going to get me while my mom and I were outside looking in shop windows. He came out with two presents, one small one big. I opened up the small present before dinner tonight, it was a cute little character of the Olympics. There are five of them in five colors. The blue one, who I got, is named Beibei.

After we went into that store we walked around the food area. We saw corn on the cob and fried bugs on sticks, yuck. We sat down at a table while our mom went around to each table picking out food. We ate dumplings, pork, and noodle soup.

At home again we were tired and took a nap, we’re still not used to the time change yet. Then we went to have dinner with someone my dad works with named Nate and his fiancee Monica. We went to The Peking Duck. It was fancy. They carved their famous duck in front of us. We ate it all up. It was terrific. I didn’t think I’d like duck, but it actually tasted good.

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21. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Brrr what a cold and rainy day. We were supposed to go out to breakfast, but instead we ate at the hotel’s buffet again. Afterwards we walked three miles in the wet pouring rain, miserably. My brother and I were whining the whole entire time. We finally got to Confucius temple. We saw lots of things there. Here is a picture of Confucius.

Then we went to the Lama temple. It is a functioning Buddhist temple with real monks ( lamas) dressed in brown robes. We saw a huge buddah three stories high, and 85 feet tall. We also saw a prayer wheel, when ever you spin the wheel you have prayed. In one of the pictures I am spinning the prayer wheel.

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20. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Yesterday it was a rainy day and we were trying to go out to dinner. My mom forgot to pack everyone sweatshirts, but I found one for myself and my parents both had jackets. My brother Alex only had a long sleeve shirt and no hood. It was pouring. We got lost and couldn’t find the restaurant we were going to for dinner. My dad led us into a subway station. There were people selling umbrella’s so we bought one for Alex. He complained at first because it was a pinkish color, but he was happy to have something over his head. We ended up at a sea food restaurant were they didn’t speak any English. My parents pointed to what we wanted. We ended up with four shrimps and a plate of duck. The shrimp had eyes on them and I got grossed out so my mom tore the the heads off. When we got home we were happy to be out of the rain. Our whole family was wide awake until about 3:00 am.

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19. April 2008 by admin.

I’ve arrived in China.  On the plane trip we passed the North Pole and it was all cracked ice and it looked really cool.  It took us nineteen hours to get here. We had five meals and snacks on the plane, yuck I hate airplane meals like frozen noodles.  Now we’re here and our hotel is sweet. The city looks exactly the same as in Philidelphia. It has construction work, many buildings and many people.  Our hotel has an indoor pool and many stores inside it.  I have to go eat breakfast now and I’m starving for a good breakfast (Or dinner, that’s what time it would be in Havertown).  It is 7:00 in the morning right now.  It is a twelve hour difference between China and Pennsylvania.

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31. March 2008 by admin.

This is Ilana’s blog. I will begin blogging about my trip to China starting on April 19th. Check back here for all the day-by-day details.

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