Busy eating Chuan'r

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. Up until recently, nothing too exciting has really happened. Class has kept me really busy, but I think I’m starting to get into a groove with studying, which is good because I was pretty overwhelmed the first couple of weeks of class. I think I've been hitting my homesickness low lately. It's normally really hard for me to get homesick, but China is so far away from home and its tough to communicate with everyone from the states. I really miss my parents, Sarah, all my friends from BR and Wake and just being in the states in general. I've had Chinese food pretty much every meal since I've been here and I'm still not even close to being sick of it, but I feel like I need a little variety soon. Me and a few others went to KFC the other day, but it wasn't really satisfying. The chicken was tiny and the mashed potatoes were in a container the size of shot glass. Needless to say, it was also much more expensive than Chinese food. Despite that experience, I'm still craving some McDonalds. Anyway, enough with my whining.
Yesterday, my 21st Century Beijing class had a fieldtrip to a hutong near the Forbidden City. For those of you who don't know, a hutong is just a very narrow street that runs through the traditional housing found in Beijing. Unfortunately, because of the upcoming Olympic games China has begun tearing down certain hutong neighborhoods in order to build modern buildings. But recently, China has realized the historical significance of these neighborhoods, and has begun restoring certain ones. That’s my history lesson for today. So, we arrived in a parking lot near the hutong neighborhood, which happened to be right between a huge bell and drum tower. Our tour guide arrived shortly there after and told us that we were going to be going up into the drum tower. I was really excited, but then I saw the stairwell that went up to the top. It was the steepest set of stairs I have ever seen and they were slanted. After climbing the Mt. Everest of staircases, we were greeted with the thunder of four giant drums being played, it was really cool. Then the view from the top of the tour was amazing, but as always there was tons of smog. I could actually see the Forbidden City and a lake near by, which is a really rare sight in Beijing. After we got our fill of sight seeing, we went back downstairs and loaded into a caravan of rickshaws. It was really funny. I kind of felt bad though, because it seems kind of demeaning to have a guy pull you on a bike. But all the drivers were really funny and it was cool to be driven through the alleyways of the hutongs. We eventually stopped and took a tour of one of the quadrangle homes in the hutong neighborhood. The owner was really nice and told us all about his home and living in the hutongs, it was pretty interesting. Him, his wife and his daughter all share two small rooms. After the visit, we headed back to the dorm, which took about an hour and a half because of the incredible traffic in Beijing.
Getting back to the title of this post, Chuan'r is just some sort of meat stuck on a wooden stick. I normally eat the lamb variety, but I have seen many others. I've seen seahorse, scorpions, bread, beef, pork, chicken, chicken hearts (which I tried, tasted like beef), and squid. China has a ton of interesting food. I'll try to keep everyone updated on the crazy food that I eat. Our CET group is heading to the Great Wall tomorrow, so I'll have some more cool stories and tons of new pictures too. Check out the pictures from yesterday on my picture sight, there are some pretty cool ones!