College Days

Woke up at the hostel, and did my usual routine of wandering around in my flip flops, standing outside the front door of the hostel and watching people walk by, then showering. Ran across Mark, a Canadian of the french persuasion, and he mentioned that he was going to the electronics district in Beijing.



I left my iPod at home, not wanting it to get stolen, and I've got a 12 hour train ride in a few days, so I'm in need of some kind of music device. Mark mentions that he's going to the "electronics" city section of Beijing, which sounds like as a good a place as any to pick up a cheap mp3 player.



A few days ago, Mark met a college student at Tianamen square. Meeting any Chinese person at Tianamen square is pretty sketchy, especially "students" who commonly want to take you out to a 500 dollar cup of tea so they can "practice their english", and so on. Apparently Mark decided to give the guy a chance, and discovered that he was in fact, a very nice college student. Any flags that went up in my head about the guy immediatley dissappeared after I heard what his name was. Most asian people give themselves random and simple english names. "Joe", "Jim","Dave". If they are clever, they might come up with an english name that sounds similar to their asian name, like "May". This guy however, came up with a pretty unique name. What was it?

Wait for it....

Wait for it....

Switzerland.

I have no clue how he came up with that.

Anyway, after Switzerland showed up, we strolled through the electronics market, haggled with vendors over different products, and I finally ended up getting a 1GB mp3 player for about 30 bucks, which is roughly what I would have paid in the US. Most of the electronics I saw in the market were priced pretty close to what you'd pay in the states.

After that, we went back with Switzerland to his univerisity, to have dinner with him and his friend. Seemed like a pretty normal college university from what I saw, with the exeception that the food in the cafeteria was pretty damn good and cheap, and they served beer. I'd go into more detail about the food, but I don't really know much about what the dishes were.

We then walked around, and went to the rec area, where there was the biggest room of ping pong tables I have ever seen in my life.

I'd put a picture up, but the only decent one I have is pretty crappy, and blogspot doesn't want to let me upload it for some reason, so it'll have to wait.