Week 4: Forbidden City, Coke and Scorpians OH MY!

It's almost the end of the 4th week with the APSA scholars on their epic Beijing trip. I finally feel the kids are starting to open up to each other, girls have sleepovers and gossiping as well as just finally forming more of an actual relationship rather than superficial relationships.

During our cultural excursion exploration, my group decided to go to Forbidden City and it was a great to see their reactions as to the enormous space that it actually takes to build as well as to preserve. I told them to actively think of all the people who have crossed the same halls as them and picture life in the palace before them. Gave them a mini history lesson on the court life as well as the concubine situation with the Emperor back in the day.

For our company visit this week, we went to Coca-Cola factory based in Beijing. It was very interesting because we got samples of their drinks (Fanta, Sprite, Sugar cane juice/tea, green tea as well as normal Coke) and tour their facilities. The factory really smelled like slow churning coke sugar...I'm not sure if anyone knows what I mean, but if you drink a coke and smell a bit of it, that's what it smelled like but more overwhelming. We received lots of free products from them such as an olympic coke sponsored pin, more coke but this time in old fashioned glass bottles (which we were not allowed to keep) as well as LOTS of photos around the factory lol

As a continuation of exploration for the kids, we decided to have a night out in Beijing so we took them to Wangfujin! Kids were going crazy on our way to the locations from singing on the subway to just plain ol' being silly. The full moon--it does have quite an effect on people lol

I made my whole group eat scorpion as a dare/promise. One of the kids pinky promised me and I was like Nope! You promised for the whole group, we eat it together! It was great because it's just an experience they will not get in the States and where else would they find chuars filled with scorpions, spiders and grasshoppers?! It was great to see their reactions and I even ate one...It tasted like really old chicken that's gone stale lol This dare even made two of my kids eat the bigger scorpions!! I'm so proud of them!!

Tomorrow we head out to Cuandixia! I'm so excited to be in this village surrounded by gorgeous mountains! Even though it's my weekend off, I really do want to do the hike up the mountain and just my streak of doing things I would not normally do!

Hopefully I'll take some good photos and maybe even catch the sunrise!