The last weekend, a few of my friends and I decided to go to places in Beijing that we missed out on such as the Temple of Heaven, Wangfujing Snack Street and we of course had to make a quick stop to the Silk Market. The Temple of Heaven was pretty incredible and I realize that when I get back home, it’s going to take a while to get used to not seeing thousands of years old temples and mosques. After we stopped by the Temple of Heaven to take a few pictures, we went to the Wangfujing Snack Street, because one of my friends JJ really wanted to eat a scorpion (little did he know, he was going to eat a live one). 

When I first arrived at Wangfujing, I saw tall buildings and shopping centers everywhere. I was immediately reminded of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. We went into one of these malls and seeked out a dessert restaurant called Snow Monster, which is by far 在世界上数一数二 (in the world, top one or two) places you need to go. They served this thing that was kind of like a Korean dessert called Bingsoo, except it was a lot better. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was certainly a religious experience eating this ice cream/shaved ice/God-sent dessert from heaven. After this, we went to the actual Snack Street, which had delicious little treats like scorpion, larvae, starfish, and seahorse. Wow! Tasty! Haha I was too freaked out to actually try these things, but JJ and Emma (the blue-haired girl from Penn) were so down. While struggling to remove the tail of the live scorpions and getting ready to eat, JJ and Emma started to draw a crowd. Incredible. Because I had cringed so much throughout the entire half an hour of watching them eat/snapchatting their experience, I suggested to go back to Snow Monster. So we got another one.

This was probably my favorite weekend in Beijing and it’s hard to know that there are only a few more days left in this awesome city.