this one time we went to China...

so 2 weeks ago we went to china. everybody keeps asking us WHY we went to china, so i'll tell you now.  ryan barlow found this amazing deal on travel zoo for a 8 day trip to beijing and shanghai. when i heard about it i knew right away that we would go, even though i have never had any desire to ever go to any asian country. dawson on the other hand, has ALWAYS talked about going to japan or china. we talked about it and i said we should definitely go  (and that next year we should go somewhere with a beach). and then we found out that we were going to be crashing alex and morgan knight's honeymoon, because they had booked the same exact trip! seriously, what are the odds? they had realized along with us that it was too good of a deal to pass up, especially when we learned that our WHOLE trip (flight, hotel, tours, transportation, and half our meals) was less than a normal roundtrip plane ticket to china. boo yah. 

so after getting our VISA's, packing, saying goodbye to dash, a night in LA, a quick 12 hour flight to beijing where dawson and i only slept 1 hour, and some horrible in-flight asian food, we were finally in...

CHINA!!!

we were happy to find out this whole trip wasn't a scam when we were greeted by our amazing tour guide, lisa, who quickly taught us the ropes of china.  examples: don't drink anything but bottled water, dress warm, informed us bathrooms are called "happy rooms", and how to say hello in chinese (ni hao!).  she sent us on a bus to our hotel where we even more surprised to find out that our hotel was legit and not some sketchy hostel like we were expecting.

  
since we were famished and wanting a good meal after that horrible airplane food, we headed to the closest restaurant.  i was a little nervous when i first looked at the menu. but it ended up being more than edible. And FYI, we did not order the marinated wild black fungus, even though dawson wanted to.

we had chopsticks, ate the native food, and knew how to say 2 phrases in chinese, so you would think we were officially in china, right? wrong. you aren't official until you use a "4 Star" or under happy room:

don't worry.  our hotel rooms had "5 star" toilets.  god bless marriott hotels for always letting a girl sit down and use a roll of toilet paper.