I am a new woman!

So here is the thing, being in China has been wonderful, but after two weeks, some of us were starting to lose a little bit of our enthusiasm. The homesickness started to creep into our group.  Suddenly, talk of grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade tomato soup started to taint my mind,turning me against the wonderful food here.  Normally at home, Chinese food, even great Chinese food is at most a couple of times a week.  Eating it for breakfast, lunch and dinner started to make us all feel a bit maxed out.

Last night Susan made a miraculous discovery, there was a TGI Fridays in Beijing near the Olympic Park!  My roommate Sara hopped right on it and made it her mission to get us there.  She has turned into "The Public Transportation Guru".  She made a plan, knew where we needed to go and six of us headed out. 

The trip was made even better by the fact that we were able to see Olympic Park at night.  We took all kinds of pictures in the park.  Then we were able to find the hotel with the TGI Fridays awning hanging outside.  We squealed with joy like kids entering Disney World once that red and white awning came into view.

This is my favorite picture of The Bird's Nest.  I love how it was reflected in the water.  It is amazing as you walk around Olympic Park, all the road construction they did to accommodate tourism. Those roads now are just long empty stretches.  They are shut off from the city now.  So you can walk down these huge four lane highways like a massive sidewalk.
 
It gave me sort of an eerie feeling, like it was almost a ghost town or something.  They turn the lights off and shut the park down at 9pm.  I have found that really interesting about Beijing, they seem to totally run on "Kate Time".  I am so not a night person.  By 9pm, I am almost always ready to pack it in and go to bed.  Here it is so quiet at night, not at all like the big cities in the US, where things don't even get started until 10pm.  Apparently, the Chinese are working so hard, they either do not want to go out at night, or are still working at night.  Many of our students work for their professors until 11pm each night.

One of the things we were so excited to get at TGI Fridays was "real Diet Coke".  Here they have "Coke Light".  It tastes different and none of us like it.  So the first thing we asked our server was, "Do you have American Diet Coke?"  And she happily replied they did.  Sara, a dedicated Diet Coke drinker was thrilled.  This picture captures her utter disappointment when the server brought her the dreaded Coke Light!  Augh!  Oh well, the food was still amazing.

Susan is loving her Sesame Chicken!  Can you tell she is happy?

Javan, who loves food more than any of us, including me, which is saying a lot, was giddy.  She was digging into some fried macaroni and cheese.  One of our requirements was that we had to try to eat at much cheese as possible.  Most of us haven't had any dairy since we've been here.  We're all missing cheese, even the processed kind!

I don't have the picture, but Amy and the other Sara also split a huge brownie sundae.  I was too full to have much, but they did let me have a bite.  Yum!  Since the park had closed, we weren't sure how to get back to the subway, since the stop is inside the park, so we took a cab home.  All of us glowed with full bellies, renewed energy and a sense of accomplishment.  It seemed applicable that at the end of our week of discussing mental health and different theories and therapies surrounding mental health, that we took our own mental health trip to TGI Fridays and found it to be perfect therapy for our homesick hearts and stomachs.