We reached Beijing at 4am, without having gotten any sleep the night before. It was still dark out as we walked over in a daze to a McDonalds (the only place to eat at that hour). We all washed up a bit and sat there quite out of it for a while. We had to wait until 6am for the metro to start running so we could rush over to the embassy district and hunt down the Uzbekistan Embassy to get visas for our planned travel there later in the trip. We weren't sure where it was because they did not answer their phones and several addresses were listed online. It was only open from 9am-11am and we needed to get the process started quick during the week, so we would not have to stay too long in Beijing and have to cut out days from the rest of our trip. So, with that in mind, we hopped on the metro with our heavy backpacks and trudged all over, after getting bad directions from all sorts of people. Finally we came upon the German Embassy and from there the Uzbekistan embassy, having walked all over, up and down all kinds of stairs etc with our heavy backpacks for a couple of hours. We got to the embassy early and put our things in a pile on the sidewalk. I slept on my backpack for a bit as we waited. Finally the opened and we spent some time on filling out the applications and getting it all taken care of. Thanks again to Mike and Andy's preparedness, we got it all done on the spot. Afterward we went back to the same hostel we had stayed at last time we were in Beijing just before going to Mongolia. This time we didn't have a reservation, but after being hassled a bit by the kid at the desk, we got a 3 bed room and Andy got a bed in a different room. We washed up and hung out in the cafe for a while. I updated some blog stuff and just relaxed. I figured I would just sleep at night. Sunny and the rest of the kind staff at the hostel cafe asked if we would perform there again like we did last time. She was very sweet in expressing how much they all enjoyed the music we played last time. It was a pretty spontaneous performance, but it had been lot of fun. We agreed to come back after dinner and play. In the evening, Andy, Omar and I walked around a bit. We found a really good restaurant and ate a bunch of food. The kids working there were all young college students who were extremely friendly and happy to talk to us. Two kids in particular were really nice to us, so we invited them to the hostel cafe to check out our music performance there later that night. We got back and Andy and Omar grabbed the guitar and bongos which we took upstairs to quickly figure out a few more songs. We really had not had no to prepare, and the guitar turned out to have one really messed up string that Andy frantically tried to clean up and make usable. Omar and I head down as it was time to start, and Andy was still working on the guitar upstairs. I sat down with my laptop and the cafe was packed with people, as a note had gone up on the board that a World Music performance was to take place that night, or maybe they all just happened to be there. I don't know.
Andy finally made it down having miraculously made the guitar barely useable and we started playing. The crowd this time was less attentive. Last time we were just playing around and soon everyone just turned and started watching us. This time it was much louder and we had no mics just like last time, so we really were not loud enough for that setting. But there were groups sprinkled in the crowd cheering and clapping. More important than that though, what really made the night for us was that, for one, the cafe staff were really happy, and the two kids from the restaurant were there from the very start of the performance. After a few songs, they asked me to sing a favorite song of theres, so I pulled up the lyrics and we all sang it together. It was so much more fun to include them and sing together rather than just perform to them. They suggested another song that they taught us and we sang that together too. That was the best part of the night. It's what really made it worthwhile, was to interact and give thanks to these two kids that went out of their way to be nice to us at the restaurant. We sat around and talked to people, including the two kids late into the night. They wanted to know about our travels and told us about the beautiful parts of China they were from. Finally we all exchanged emails and called it a night.
