Three cheers for 14 hours of sleep! Thankfully after my adventures yesterday, I was able to take a long nap and I finally got a full night's sleep. My roommate missed her flight yesterday evening so she ended up spending the night hanging out with me watching Olympic sports on TV on the host networks. I had a few visitors throughout the night before I fell asleep, but it was nice to just relax and lay around doing nothing for an entire day. And I needed it, too. I'm feeling much better today and my voice has almost returned to normal, with the exception of a few squeaks here and there, but at least I'm almost audible now.
I was ready to venture off by myself this morning to check out the Temple of Heaven and the Pearl Market, which are across the street from each other on the far south end of the city. I wanted to be able to sleep in and go when I felt like it without having to worry about schedules or groups of people. I got up around 10:30 and was checking my e-mail down at the logistics office when I ran into a friend from Syracuse who's also interning here and he decided to go along with me.
Our first stop was the Pearl Market because I desperately needed a new pair of sunglasses (I managed to crack my favorite pair of all time the other day, I was so sad). I found red Chanel glasses for a seriously good price so I was very happy. They're actually in really good shape, too, so I'm wondering if they're possibly stolen from the States and resold here or taken directly from the factory and sold. All I know is they're awesome and I love them. I also bought onyx, jade, coral, crystal, and pearl jewelry -- all real stones and pearls, all from the same place, all for 500 RMB, which is basically nothing for that much jewelry. And they will make such great gifts!
The next stop was the Temple of Heaven, which I've been wanting to see since I got here. We walked through huge gardens outside the Temple where we saw an old Chinese man painting Mandarin characters on a sidewalk with a huge brush and locals gathering all over the place playing Chinese instruments and singing and dancing. It was another gorgeous day with blue skies so I got some amazing pictures of the Temple and I loved the atmosphere of the whole place. There was one building that served as a museum for ancient pottery that was used to make offerings to the gods and there was another building that took you step by step through the process of how the emperors made sacrifices to the gods and what items they had to offer in order to pray for certain things. 
The main area of the Temple was called the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest and inside was a massive throne dedicated to the harvest gods with statues of offerings along the side. It was all gorgeous. I of course flipped out again over the beautiful designs and colors on all of the buildings.Today and tomorrow are finally the last days of diving. I've volunteered myself to be stage manager for tonight's session since it's the job no one wants to be stuck with (it's SO boring, especially during a preliminary round like tonight's) and I basically had the day off yesterday. One more full day of work, then a couple days of packing up the compound, a few days of time to do some last-minute exploring, then it's home free!!
1 comment:
I thought you were supposed to be broke on your unpaid internship? And here you are wearing designer glasses and real stones. Maybe you should have asked those monks how to pray for more money.
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