Downtown and Olympic Buildings

• At the beginning, I remember that the camp took us on a tour around the city a lot. There's a lot of people driving on the roads of Beijing, that's for sure! The first area they took us too was a university in Beijing. There weren't many people there (I suppose because it's summer) and the classrooms looked huge, which I think is typical for a university. While we were on the bus, I spotted vehicles that I never seen in Canada. It's hard to describe, but they are like bikes that have a "shed" and a door, like a car.


• The first highlight of my trip, however was when they took us to see the olympic buildings constructed for the Beijing 2008 olympic games! The second picture shown above is the bird nest (aka the Beijing National Stadium). The structure was designed to look intrigueing while being "light weight, but earthquake proof". The basic design of the museum was inspired by a sewing ball and the way the metal overlaps eachother is how it got its' "bird nest" nickname (K.). Unfotunately, we did not get to see what the inside looked like! We also saw the other olympic buildings, like the watercube.

Lotsa Good Food!

Photo by Prince Photos from Pexels.
• Well, something I ate everyday was Chinese food, of course. I didn't mind at all because I'm always craving Chinese! My only issue was that the cafetaria didn't have much plant-based foods (not the case for restaurants). There was a group from India who were kind enough to let me share their food with them (they had a special area catering to them) and I'm still thankful of their generosity. It's a little hard to recall all the dishes I ate in Beijing, but it was more or less similar to what we have at Chinese restaurants in Canada. The only difference I noticed was in taste, slightly. I find that the food I ate in general was a little less sweet there compared to in Canada. It had more of a steam-y taste, if that makes sense. Besides that, we went to a tea house, which was very calming.


Photo by Judgefloro from Wikimedia Commons.
• A type of mushroom I was introduced to thanks to this trip was the cloud ear mushroom. I have never seen it in Chinese restaurants in Canada. It's a mushroom that is dried and then boiled in water. Anytime we went to restaurants, I always grabbed a few of those and put them in my plate. They are very delicious! When I came back to Canada, I always asked my mother to buy me some at the supermarket.