Adventures All Over: Forbidden City

I was rushing around so much last week that I didn’t get a chance to post anything… and then the weekend, (Halloween & Kanye), was such a shitshow that I never even made it out of Jing… even though I’m supposed to be in Shanghai right now and even had a 400 kuai train ticket.

Backing up, I spent all week frantically rushing around packing, shipping things, cleaning etc – all in all extremely boring and not really worth mentioning. Two things though:

1) I made In-N-Out... it was actually very easy, but it didn't taste quite right because I used extra sharp cheddar cheese and so the cheese had too much taste. The sauce tasted pretty good though - I just mixed Thousand Island with sour cream to make it a little less strong.

Animal style fries... Beijing style

2) On Monday I went to the US embassy to VOTE because my absentee ballot had gotten lost somewhere in the Chinese postal system – somehow they are still managing to thwart democracy even if I am not a citizen of the country. The address from the website was utter crap and completely wrong, so I ended up having to call the number to try and find out where the feck it was because at this point I had been wandering around a back alley with donkeys and rubble for a good 45 minutes, wondering why the US would put their embassy in such a shithole. I called the number and got a recorded options: number 1 – to report the death, arrest or kidnapping of a American citizen, and option 2: more information. Option 2 was just more recording and completely worthless, so I decided I would just push 1 and profusely apologize for abusing their system when the person came on the line. Pushed 1, and I got: AN ANSWERING MACHINE!!... good to know that if I’m reporting someone being kidnapped or dread it goes to voicemail.

PS: VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

Below are just some pics of the olympic venues and the forbidden city.. which I finally went to go see - I'm such a bad tourist.