The Next Day.

Blog – day 3

This morning we had breakfast in the hotel – a buffet, and we could choose anything we wanted. They served western breakfasts, everything from bacon and eggs and waffles, to coco-pops and fruit. With such long days and a lot of working and walking on the schedule, it’s important to get a good start to the day.

The bus took us to the Hanban Center, a Confucius Education and Cultural institute where we were shown a brief history of the development of Chinese characters from drawings. It’s easy to see where the characters came from when someone shows you. We were also shown Chinese musical instruments, paper cuttings and opera costumes in an excellent interactive display.

For lunch we had dumplings. The tour organisers have made a lot of effort to make sure we try lots of different styles of Chinese cuisine at every meal. This food is quite different to the type of food we find in most Chinese restaurants in Australia. Most restaurants at home serve Cantonese style dishes which have been adapted for Australian tastes. Here the style is Mandarin.

We had an opportunity to split into groups in the afternoon to go and explore Beijing. Ms. Williams, Ms. Cooper and Mr. Cameron joined with the staff of Upper Yarra College and went off to visit the Lama Temple. This Buddhist temple is the home of the Chinese Buddhism in Beijing. It is very serene and very beautiful.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we were done, and so we decided to try and find some very typical Chinese streets with everyday Chinese life – the type of place tour guides don’t show you. We found a shopping strip with some very cool shops and people (and some very funny names for their shops – make sure you ask us when we get home). It was a lot of fun checking all the shops and seeing the types of things the local people want to buy. Our Upper Yarra friends decided to head home to the hotel, but the Mooroolbark staff are tougher, and so we continued on and walked around a large lake with lots of restaurants and cafes and music. Some of the food on sale was very strange and we weren’t prepared to try some of it.

Finally we found somewhere to have some dinner. We grabbed some food and chatted about our adventures so far, about Mooroolbark College, and how we can share our experiences with you all. We talked so much that we had to run to catch the last train.

We missed it.

And so we caught a taxi and returned to our hotel at around 11.30 p.m. I think we all fell asleep very quickly.