Captured this just outside the Forbidden City. Nothing like training communist patriotism at such a young age

Day 3 was marked with a 2 hour presentation on designing user experiences and several 1:1’s with the Program Managers in the Beijing offfice.  It was a busy day, but it got more frantic near the end of the day when I realized that I don’t have my weekend planned out and I don’t even own a “Welcome to Beijing” tour book :)  It complicates matters not to have internet access in my hotel room, so I’ve spent the last hour doing web research in my office and making print outs of stuff that will come in handy.

My plans for this weekend are to fit in the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and 798 art district.  Oh, and obviously lots, and lots of eating random foods.  I’m saving the Great Wall for a weekday excursion to avoid the manic crowds, and to hopefully minimize my chance of getting pick-pocketed

I’m not normally squeamish about venturing off on my own when I travel, but it’s a bit scarier here since it’s hard to navigate the city not being able to speak the language or understand any of the written language.  When I traveled through Europe last year with my sister, it was at least easy to memorize words on signs since they used a latin character set.  In Beijing, I’ve had to resort to getting my coworkers to write down the chinese translation of certain locations so I can show taxi drivers.

The best tip I got was to call my coworkers from the cab and handing the cab driver the phone so my coworkers can tell them where I want to go.  I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t think of this before someone in my office suggested it. Eep.

Tonight I’m meeting up with a local girl from the US that is teaching English in Beijing and who’s graciously offered to show me around a bit.  Luckily she’s willing to take the subway out to my part of the town where we’ll then venture off from here to grab dinner and drinks.