Yesterday was my first weekday without my travel buddy... my navigation system... the one who helps motivates me to get up in the morning and actually do something with my day. So Day 1 without Ann looked like this... Sitting on the computer until lunch time, eventually going out to a Japanese restaurant, then coming back and sitting down until late and eventually deciding that I can't waste a day, so i ventured out to the Lama Temple at about 3pm.
Very important travel tip, when you go to a country where you don't speak the language and decide to take public transportation and go somewhere have an idea of where you're going looks like. When I got off the Subway, I had no idea what I was looking for and walked the wrong way to a water park, because it looked like it could be something important...
I eventually went the other direction and found the Lama Temple. According to Wikipedia, The Lama Temple is apparently one of the most important Tibetan Buddhist Temples in the world. So it is a religious place, like the Sistine Chapel of Tibetan Buddhists. Again it is not just one temple, but a series of temples (I think that something is lost in translation). It was odd because people were worshiping while tourists walked through. I was not from this culture so I did not want to take pictures of people worshiping also apparently you are not supposed to take pictures of Buddha and some other figures, so I just kind of walked around. Also I was hesitant to walk into places when people were burning incense and bowing to Buddha. So I would wait until someone else who looked like they knew what they were doing(meaning looked Chinese) took the lead. Again, the structures were large and very detailed. This whole thing took only about 30-40 minutes and I figured I should walk around or do SOMETHING for a while.
Meeting Briana:
So I started walking down the street, there were stores on both sides, when I reached the end I decided to walk on the other side back to the subway, I saw an alleylike sidestreet that looked tempting so I walked down it. I was walking along when a young lady approaches me and asks me if I speak english, I say yes, then we start to talking. Turns out she is from Palmdale, CA (yeah, i don't know where it is either.) She says she's going to find a sandwich, so I walk w/ her to a hutong (alley like area). We venture around and eventually find a ridiculously overpriced cafe next to a hostel. When we finish eating we go out and walk around some more, looking at stuff. At lunch I made the statement that I think one day I'm going to just try to get lost so I can see the city. So we start walking along the street and then toward a subway. Long story short, we are walking around when we realize that the shortcut that we tried to take didn't take us to where we were trying to go. Now, two people who don't speak the language, not really knowing where they are going, traveling down an alley where people give them slightly funny looks...Don't worry again... I know what you are thinking... YES!!!!! SO MUCH FUN! Seriously, though it was a great opportunity to see some different things and we weren't too lost so it was ok. (Really all about perspective I'll talk about it on a later post) I got to see a lot of the area and some smaller side streets. Eventually, after walking in a few circles, we found the street I was supposed to be on, she left to her hostel and I left to the subway. So after hanging for like 3 hours Briana and I parted ways.
When i got off the subway, it was kind dark outside and I forgot which exit to take, so I took the wrong exit and decided that correct direction was the wrong way and kind of walked the wrong way, and again found myself slightly LOST(so much fun)!!! So i decided to take pictures of random stuff that I saw. I eventually found my way and that pretty much concluded my day!
did you know... That Palmdale, CA refers to itself with the nickname "the aerospace capital of the United States"
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