Bye Bye Birdie

Mom and Tina were up at 3:30 this morning to get ready for their ridiculously long flight back to America. I took some time off work this week so I could hang out with them. On Thursday we went to the Yashow Market and spent a serious amount of time shopping. We were there for so long that I thought I may start hitting people that were shouting, "Hey lady!" or "Come have a look." Mom and Tina stocked up on souvenirs. They both bought a few jade pieces. My mom is one heck of a hard bargainer... She was offering to pay stupidly low prices for things. She tried two buy two pieces of jade for 10 RMB. She definitely did better than Tina and I. I felt bad for the vendors that had to deal with my mom. She was one tough cookie. I bought a bracelet and a jewelry box from one man and I had an entire conversation with him in Chinese. I was very impressed with myself. I certainly wasn't using appropriate grammar or speaking in full sentences but he seemed to understand me okay. My mom bought a few bracelets and a present for my brother from the same guy and she bargained so hard that he ended up giving her something for free. Why doesn't this ever happen for me? After hours of bargaining for trinkets and things we made our way to the bottom floor so I could get some new "TOMs." I bought them for 50 RMB and I congratulated myself for my good bargaining skills. I am pretty sure my mom would have bought them for 20... but hey, I did pretty well.

After the Hey Lady Market we went to lunch and then out to Tiananmen Square. Forbidden City was already closed so we didn't go in. But we did catch the end of the flag lowering ceremony and had a good laugh when trying to capture the perfect Mao pinching picture.

Tina pinches Mao

Chelsie pinches Mao

We are pretty happy to be at the square

While at Tiananmen we came across two Chinese girls about my age who invited us out for a drink with them. We realized pretty quickly that these girls were scamming us but we went with them anyways because they were friendly enough. We went to a tea house and you had to rent out the room. We had beer and coffee and some conversation. We ended up with a pretty hefty tab because of the room rental but we paid it (split between five people) and headed out. The girls definitely worked for the place because I find it pretty hard to believe that they would have known where this back-alley tea house was. It was a little annoying but not so bad. I actually enjoyed talking to them.

Last I checked Mom and Tina were about here on their route to Detroit for their layover (this was about an hour ago):

I hope the flight is more on track than it seems from the crooked path.

 Mandarin lesson:
Fēijī 飞机 (airplane)