The final hours

8/26/08 17:05 Local time, Media Village

Finally, my last day in Beijing has arrived! Both of my two remaining roommates left this morning so I'm back in an empty apartment just like I was my first week here. It's a little hard to believe that this is the last night I get to sleep in my bed here. It's those "lasts" of everything that I really hate. But classes have now started back at school and I miss my friends and family a lot so I can't wait to get home and get back into the swing of things.

Last night was just about everyone's last night in Beijing, so of course everyone went out. I tagged along to dinner with my two roommates and three other interns and I finally got to try hot pot! They sat the six of us down at this big round table that had an area in the center that heated up into a hot surface for the pot. We had to pick a broth to put in the middle, so we got one huge pot that was divided down the middle so half of the broth was spicy and half was not. It had all kinds of vegetables and seasonings in it and we put it on the hot part of the table. Once the broth boiled, we had ordered two plates of meat, two dishes of huge Chinese noodles, a basket of vegetables, and a plate of sliced lotus to drop in the water to cook. The meats came out completely raw and were sliced so thinly that it looked more like deli meat than anything else, with the exception of the chicken, which came in little chunks still attached to the bones. We had to drop what we wanted into the broths to cook, which only took a minute or two because the meat was so thin, and then fish it all out with our chopsticks. It was hilarious to watch everyone try to be competent enough in chopstick handling to pull the long, slippery noodles out. They kept landing everywhere but on our plates, and it actually got to the point where the waitresses came over with their big giant chopsticks to help us and serve us. Again with the whole "stupid American" vibe we so often tend to give off here apparently...

I tried so many new foods last night and every single one of them was delicious yet again. The main meat plate we had was mutton, which is sheep and what this particular restaurant happened to be known for. It was fantastic -- I've never tasted anything like it. I also tried the lotus, which was incredible, as well as tofu, mushrooms, roots, and some other weird vegetables that no one knew what they were but still tasted good. We also had sesame cakes which were like little rolls covered in sesame seeds. Those were my favorite. This restaurant also surprisingly had its own microbrewery and they made pretty good beer, actually -- much sweeter than anything I've tasted here. This was by far my favorite restaurant that I've been to in Beijing. We had such a great time.

After dinner we all went back to the Village to regroup with some other interns and I met up with some of the guys from the aquatics crew at the umbrella tables we have behind our building. All of the interns ended up going out to Sanlitun, the same place we went after our intern dinner. We went to this one rooftop bar called Kokomo that was mostly a foreign crowd and had reggaeton music blasting so loud you could barely hear yourself talk. We ended up for the night at one bar that had a good mix of American and local everything -- people, drinks, music. It ended up being a fun and perfect night.

Today I decided to sleep in and venture out to the Beijing Zoo on my own time because I wanted to see some pandas. I really am very surprised that I can navigate this city now just in time to leave it. I took the subway all the way to the zoo and wandered around for a few hours looking at reptiles, monkeys, zebras, giraffes, rhinos, and penguins. I loved them all! They were so cute, but nothing compared to the pandas. I guess this zoo is known for breeding pandas in captivity so they had a huge display of them. One was hanging upside down in a tree when I saw it, and others were eating bamboo and sleeping. I fell in love with them so quickly.

The whole Beijing Zoo is like half park, half zoo. There's a river that runs through the middle of it and long sidewalks under the willow trees I love so much. The place is beautiful. I loved taking my time and strolling through all of it. It was my idea of a perfect way to spend my last day here, and I got to explore a new part of the city, too, on my way to and from the subway station. There were lots of shops and bakeries and it was much busier there than in other parts of the city, but I'm so glad I got to see it.

All that tonight has in store for me is some packing and some HBO. It's very lonely here with no one left, but tomorrow's my turn. I'll most likely write once more before I leave and then I'm home free!