Today is the first day in many many weeks that I finally could sleep in a little. At first, I was woken up by all these weird sounds, like boom boom boom for several minutes. Initially I thought it was thunder (because it was so loud) but then it was too long to be thunder; then I thought it was something wrong with the pipes inside my room, then but it was everywhere; eventually I found out it was Chinese crackers (mini fireworks) 鞭炮 outside our building: it's a wedding!!! I saw a limo with six Audi A6's driving out slowly after the Chinese crackers finished, haha, it was so interesting to see that the brides and groom all dressed up in traditional Chinese wedding wear. After this little incident I went back to sleep and finally got up at 11.30am.
Today we have to go to Peiking University 北京大学 to attend the LCP election of AIESEC PKU. Our friend from AIESEC PKU, Isabella Ko, was one of the two LCP candidates and therefore, we will be there to support her! Peiking University is at the far north west of Beijing, and we live at east of Beijing, what does this mean? This means another hour long commute to get there. We took a combination of buses and subway, picked up Josi after her work and we arrived at Peiking University East Gate Station (subway station). As soon as we got out from the subway we were lost. This is just so hard to find! There's no map showing where we're at, the few people we asked around had no idea where 二教 was. Eventually we found the east gate and to my surprise, we also found street foods!!! Haha, what a smart way to find a place with high foot traffic! The little stalls selling kumaras, cakes, chestnuts, Chinese pancakes, and Chinese skewers are all outside the Peiking University East Gate.After checking-in with the security guard and asking for directions, we found out that 二教 means second building, which is...right in front of us. This building is quite newly built and populate with students (there are classes during the weekends). When we arrived the first candidate, Amelia, has already started her speechl; so to prevent us disturbing the election process we weren't allowed to go in until after Isabella's speech. We entered into the election room when the Question & Answer section began. Each candidate had 15 minutes of speech and will have 45 minutes for Q&A. Inside the room there are about 40 AIESECers, there's also MC VP TM, Florent, a AIESEC THU member, as well as us: the EPs from NZ.
Both Amelia and Isabella are strong individuals with many AIESEC experiences. I am really proud to be part of the AIESEC network and have the chance to make my own experiences and meet all these interesting people from around the world. I don't think I should write too much about the election, neither did I get any permission from these two girls, nor did I think it's necessary to be posted online. 
During the breaks Jordan, Josi and I went outside the PKU east gate to find some street food, haha, this is a must for us!! We all had so much food! I bought 3 skewers (squid, sausage and lamb) and 3 skewers of candied shaw and fruits (shaw, shaw with read bean, and shaw with mandarin); Jordan bought 2 skewers (lamb and squid), a skewered of candied grapes, and a Chinese pancake; Josi only bought a Chinese pancake (which is still too big for her, lol).Our Saturday finished with a unique twist: for the first time in the past 7 days, we finally ate at home for dinner! well, it was a very late dinner; but we decided to go home and find something to eat rather than eat out everyday. Although it was a meal with instant noodles and canned meat, but we also had the Shanghai style dumplings made by Jordan's aunty and also fresh fruit we bought on our way home. We made a full table of food (well, we heated a full table of food) and it's just so nice to finally be at home. I call this a unique twist. It's such a different thing to do ( i mean staying home) when you're travelling to different places, but I really miss this feeling of coming 'home' and just relax.
I like my first Saturday in Beijing :)
I like my first Saturday in Beijing :)
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