April 13; I love my dysfunctional BJ family

Day 68

In my comparative literature class today, my professor proposed a trip to the Canadian embassy.  Hell ya, I wanna visit the Canadian embassy! I wanna show off my Canadian pride and all….and a little birdie told me that they serve really great food there.

 

After class, our professor recommended we try these scone looking biscuits filled with fruit jelly. For only 70 jiao (about $0.10 CND), you could buy one these delicious fruit filled biscuits. Quite the deal. 

The girls stuck with the usual Friday routine and I realized that I need to learn how to save/budget. The goal of my trip was to buy a pair of shorts for the rapidly increasing hot weather, and start on souvenir shopping. That went down the drain with my very first unnecessary purchase of another dress. Ahhhh, like TanG/Drake says, “YOLO.” 

yay for ghetto fitting rooms!

It really didn’t help that there was a street market just outside the Zoo market. There were shoes poured onto blankets, accessories, socks, and there were a lot little random things you don't need but want to buy. It was an unavoidable market as it was on the path to get to the subway station. It was impossible not to look/buy anything, especially since we needed to kill time before meeting up with the other teacher friends for dinner.

Tanjin and her lion

Hayley recommended a dumpling restaurant in the Gulou/Houhai hutong which was absolutely fantastic! 

Sure the dumplings were amazing, but what was even more amazing was the fact you could draw on the walls!

 

Tanjin drawing Bangladesh's flag

John drawing Chicago's flag

Multicultural wall of awesomeness

I added my little touch of "I  <3 BJ"
While the others were busy indulging in the delicious dumplings, Kristie was occupied by the fact you could draw on the wall. She drew this little masterpiece. Don't worry, we made sure there was food on her plate. 

On the subway, John was acting all fatherly to us girlies and so we started to call him Papa John. From there we discovered a family that we never knew existed.  Papa John didn't want to reveal too much, but this is what we got thus far:  Papa John had us, the girlies, at the age of twelve but we all have different mothers so that makes us half sisters. We also have a cousin Jeff. We assumed Heys would be uncle Heys and Tom would be Uncle Tom (minus the negative connotation.. Even so, we shouldn't call him that...but we'll see). I love my Beijing family!