Beijing Day 3-4/2/09

On our last day in Beijing we got to sleep in and we went on a rickshaw ride to see the "local life" of a Chinese person.  It amazed me at how much longer into their life people work in China and some of the other countries I have visited.  The rickshaw driver was probably into his early 60's and still pedaling people around on his bike.  We also noticed that there are these little parks everywhere around Beijing that look like jungle jim's but are really adult work out places open to the public which promotes good health and staying in shape, what a concept.  We were then told we were going to a women's home for lunch.  We arrived at her home at it was pretty basic concrete structure and very small.  Her and her son had prepared a large home cooked meal for us.  I asked where the bathroom was and they said it was "really dirty" and they weren't kidding.  It was a communal toilet which consisted of a hole in the ground and shared by about 8 homes.  One of the things she prepared was this uncooked meat and our guide said it was okay to eat and that all the tourists eat it.  I found out later on the plane that probably wasn't such a good call to eat it!  All of the food was really good and as always there was way too much of it.  When we were done eating, Robert translated for us and we sat and talked with the lady.  Her husband is a painter and she cooks for tourists to bring in some extra money now that she is retired from making furniture.  After the discussion we got back on the rickshaws and headed to the car.  We then headed off the airport on a brand new highway that was made for the Olympics and looked like the Dulles Toll Road.  We arrived at the airport which was massive and about 2 miles before you got to the airport there as a split for which terminal you wanted to go to, proving how big the airport really was.  Our flight was filled with all SAS kids and the security to get onto the plane was really tight.  They were much stricter about the liquids and gels than the U.S. and correlated the X-ray of your bag to your name.  When they found something suspicious in the bag they pulled up the x-ray and pointed out what they wanted you to take out.  It was really strange and many of the girls got harassed for awhile about the stuff they had in their bags.  We boarded the plane and headed to Shanghai.  When we were taking off and landing there was this camera on the bottom of the plane that was displayed on all the TV's throughout the plane which was really cool to see the birdseye view of the take off and landing.  We got to Shanghai and the taxi driver took us to the wrong entrance to the port so we ended up having to walk about a half mile through the port with all of our stuff.  We got showered and headed out to the bars/clubs in Shanghai.