Bengbu

I thought Bengbu would be a really small town since it’s not big enough to be on most maps—but it’s actually huge. It’s easily bigger than Salt Lake City with a population over 3 million (some stats say 6 million); of that 3 million, I think it’s pretty safe to say that my fellow teachers and I are the only non-Asians. Our first Saturday here (September 8^th) we decided to spend th3e whole day in the big Bengbu city. We’ve been to the city a few times to go grocery shopping and such, but today we went to explore and have fun!

Waiting for the bus—it was a very rainy day.

We visited some Chinese antique stores, the mall (where we all bought much needed rain jackets), and a restaurant for lunch. Some of the workers wanted pictures with us.

After lunch we found the cutest restaurant—with swings as chairs—so we stopped in for dessert. I got a mango crème bulee.

Next we got massages since they’re so cheap in China! I was just hoping for a nice, relaxing massage; however, all these Chinese girls came in and started taking pictures of us in the middle of it! Then after the massage, the girls and all the workers wanted a million pictures of us; we were seriously taking pictures with them nonstop for over a half hour. The girls were actually really nice and we became friends with them; we gave them English names and they gave us Chinese ones (I lost mine though!).

For dinner we found McDonalds (American food!); however, the food was a bit different than the McDonalds in the US (there’s no hamburger meat whatsoever), but it was still good. A lot of people came up to us and tried to talk to us while we were eating. Here’s a cute, little boy we met and some guy who wanted to take a picture with us.

Basically we are famous here!