New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve was an interesting day for us, certainly an interesting way to close out an adventurous year. We discovered in the morning after breakfast that we didn't have our bank card. As we had taken the train the day before, that meant our bankcard, our only access to cash, was lost somewhere back in Shanghai (we were now in beijing). We called our credit card company to find out about cash advances. They said we just had to go to a Citibank, and they would do it. We managed to find one, but the office was closed until January 2. We exchanged the last of our American Money ($200) and wondered how long it would last. We still had to pay for our trip to the great wall, which was supposed to happen 2 days later.

I forgot to mention that we didn't have the pin number for the credit card, as we have never had to use it for cash before. So we were worried that we wouldn't be able to get money without our pin, and the credit card co. wouldn't give it to us over the phone. Suddenly our recreational options felt very limited.

As it got later in the day, we were really torn about how to spend the evening. Should we go out as we had planned to a celebration that had a $25 cover charge (per person) and live it up or should we spend a quiet night in and conserve the money we had in case we couldn't get more after the holiday? We decided to throw caution to the wind and went for the "live it up" option. We had a great time! We won a free bottle of red wine. We danced to what some might call bad techno music. At midnight we were covered in a blizzard of shiny confetti. After our feet and ears were exhausted, we went to a more low-key bar, and pigged out on pizza, burritos, and a basket of popcorn.

Here we are at the end of the night, before falling asleep in our warm hotel room, with confetti still stuck to us.


Our own private concert on new year's eve - the owner of the hostel where we were staying was very friendly and played us several songs on this chinese instrument before going to get his violin to play a few more.
Sorry, you gotta tilt your head a little...