Scary stories, relationships, and sex injuries

Topic of the day: Another wonderful Beijing weekend

As luck would have it, this past weekend in Beijing proved to be the most enjoyable 2 weekend I've had this spring time, thus far. It was Habib's last weekend in Beijing, so off the bat, we knew that we had to make the weekend extra memorable.

We started Saturday off bright and early. 7 am early. Our activity of the day: a trip out to Beijing's Botanical Garden. Located on the western edge of the city, the park boasts a plethora of plant life (such things do exist around Beijing) ranging from cherry blossoms to trees that are hundreds of years old. The park also makes for a great place to have picnics and to have day outings, which conveniently was just what we had in mind.

A dozen of us, half Chinese, half foreigners, laid out our possessions on two bed sheets and let the afternoon pass by with junk food consumption (unfortunately, detox went out the window this weekend. But it restarted today!) and card games. The nippy wind that plagued us in the morning was lifted by early afternoon (along with the smog) and in its wake revealed a pleasant spring sun and a gloriously bright blue sky.

Our biggest challenge the whole afternoon: playing a game of bullshit.
Lessons learned: No one have any trust in anyone! And also Dom is not very good at the game. ;-)

With a nice Saturday behind us, Sunday turned out to be another lovely clear day. Our afternoon activity: kite flying at Tiananmen Square!

Being the largest square in the world, Tiananmen offered enough open space for Troy, Dom, Habib, and I to try out our kite flying skills. It was my first time flying and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot! Not only was it very peaceful when you actually get the kite in the air, but kite flying also offers great excitement when your kite sweeps dangerously close to the head of various bystanders (they were inches away from getting a bad rope burn!)! Sure, I got a few dirty glares my way here or there and once, my kite crashed onto the head of a little girl. But overall, there were no serious injuries and because most people thought I was the 3 boy's translator, no one got very mad either.

However, I must say that Dom was most impressive with his kite: he lost his own when the spool ran out and cut the string on another. Later on, he also lost a vital stick that supported kite #2. Well done, Dom! :)

Kite flying at Tianmen square under the watchful gaze of Chairman Mao made me realize another fact of life: Troy, Dom, and Habib are too hot for me.

Throughout our whole time there, more than a dozen incidents took place where Chinese natives came up to ask for photos, secretly taking photos, or secretly video taping the boys. Habib seemed to be especially popular, always attracting shy gazes and quiet giggles (or sometimes just straight out stares). At one point, a middle aged Chinese man with a nice Canon EOS camera and some seriously nice lenses followed us for a good 15 minutes, "discretely" taking pictures of us the whole time. Now I'm just waiting for one of our photos to pop up on some magazine with the headline: Crazy kite-flying foreigners take over Tiananmen!

Following the kite flying session, we wondered over to BeiHai Park for a stroll before finding ourselves back at Tiananmen watching the "deflagging" ceremony. My personal opinion was that it was over-rated. Of course, this had a lot to do with the fact that due to my vertically challenged state, I could only see seconds of the whole ceremony. A personal thanks goes out to Habib for giving Troy and I a personal commentary session throughout the whole thing.

Dinner was at Dongzhimen where we met up with Stephanie. It was then that we had a very interesting dinner conversation. From sleep walking, to ghosts, to relationships, to sadness, to sex and sex injuries, we covered the spectrum. I will definitely remember the fun conversation for a while to come.

On a final note, my best wishes to Woop, who as mentioned earlier, will be leaving the Middle Kingdom this week. Habib, if you're reading this, have a great time back home and enjoy the Frangelico with lime! Take care and we'll see you when we see you (hopefully back in China ;-))!