I must have sucker written all over me.

because on Saturday, someone tried to steal my shit.

This past Saturday, after skyping with my family, I took the bus to go see the Olympic Stadium construction site (ie. the Bird's Nest). I found a feature on Google China that lets you type in a starting point and destination, and it'll tell you which bus line to take. The only catch is that the entire website is in Chinese, so yeah. I didn't realize how much of a problem it would be till I actually got on the road.

So I took the 731 bus. I didn't know exactly how to pronounce the bus stop I should get off at (to transfer to the second bus); I just knew the stop had the word west in it. So stupid me, I heard a stop with the word west in it and jumped off the bus. Wrong stop. In fact I was 6 stops too early. And let me just tell you I chose the worst day to go see the stadium because it was soo foggy and cold. So I had to stand in the cold waiting for the next bus.

The next one came, and it was super crowded. But this time around, I overshot and missed my stop. So I had to get off again and take the bus in the opposite direction (again super crowded). This time around, I swallowed my pride and asked someone to tell me when the stop came so I could get off (sometimes when it comes to navigation, I get kinda stubborn). But I didn't realize that I would have to walk several blocks to get to the transfer bus. I didn't feel like walking (most likely getting lost) in the cold so I just took a taxi to the Stadium.

Even though the construction of the stadium looks pretty much finished, it is still essentially a construction site, so we couldn't go in at all. The best we could do was climb on a giant dirt rock, to peak over the construction fencing. Again, it was super foggy, so my pictures aren't that great. I met some old women from Hong Kong, and it felt good to practice my Cantonese again. Also, I found a TGI Friday's next to the stadium. I spent the next hour or so, following random people around. I saw that some people were able to walk into the construction site, and I wanted to find out how, so I decided to follow people around and try to sneak in after them. After a few duds, I finally followed the right family. I was able to go past the guards, and go into the living area where the construction workers live. And I was able to walk even closer to the area surrounding the stadium. I couldn't enter the inner construction zone, since there were more guards (and by then I had departed from my "family") who had clipboards to check people in with hard hats, so I decided to wander out with my crappy ass foggy pictures.

After that, I took the subway to WangFuJing. There I walked around this giant shopping mall (which has super upscale stores like Louis Vuitton and Coach, the real stuff). They even have a Beard Papa's. It's kinda crazy, the feeling of wealth in that place. The stuff they sell there is expensive even on American standards, so I'm just like, "Who the hell can actually afford all this stuff? And why the hell are we wasting so much damn space and resources on this shit for the small percentage of rich Chinese people and rich expats, when there are thousands of hungry poor people in this country?" It made me feel disgusting.

And hypocrite Wendy, an hour later, I went to the official Olympics store and bought way overpriced souvenirs for my family. And I went to the Metersbonwe store (if someone can give me a non-idiot way to pronounce this word, I'd greatly appreciate it) and bought myself a knee length fluffy black down jacket, because it is freaking cold now. After lots of ups-and-downs with the ATM machine, I finally got all the crap I needed and popped into a McDonald's to sit down and organize my crap (I feel more comfortable loitering in American places).

I set my purse on the table and notice that there's a cut on the side. Silly stupid me, I think to myself, "Huh, did I put a sharp pencil in my bag?" Upon further inspection, I find that someone had made 3 short razor cuts in my bag. Someone had cut my bag to try to steal my stuff!!! Lucky me, nothing was missing. Even though there were 3 razor cuts, only 1 of the cuts made it through the inner liner, and earlier that day I had bought 2 pashminas and stuffed them into my bag. So lucky lucky lucky me, I escaped potential disaster. The thing that makes me feel so stupid though is that I have no idea when it happened and I didn't even notice it, ALL DAY! Thinking back now, it probably happened on the bus, when everyone was shoved so close together. And one thing I wonder is, if someone saw this happening, if someone saw that a person was cutting into my bag to steal my stuff, would anyone speak up and do anything? (Flashback to the cafeteria fight scene). Hmm, I wonder.

Wow, this was wayy too long to tell an anti-climactic story.

Later I'll post pictures of the Olympic stadium and my fun time at the LaoShe teahouse watching Peking Opera and other Chinese performances.

Some food for thought, ever wondered why old things in China are referred to as "ancient" whereas old things in Europe are referred to as "historical?" Here are some vocabulary things I hate, but can't seem to find a practical solution to while living here in China, using "modern" to describe very specific processes and "Western" and "the West" to describe things not Chinese.