Ben's visit!

I have out up a couple of posts about Ben's visit, but also wanted to write a little about the rest of our week in Beijing...

Luckily for me, Ben is a sucker for teen drama, and wholeheartedly embraced my new found Gossip Girl addiction - to the extent that we finished off season one and ploughed through all of season two during his time in Beijing. We might have felt a bit guilty, were it not so cold outside!

Ben also became the third member (yes, Dave's the other....) of my "I love Xiao Wang" fan club, and we ate there, or ordered in from there, regularly.

On these two counts, it seems that Ben will be very well suited for life in Beijing, so it bodes well for his 11 week sabbatical starting in February next year! :-) Very exciting.

I took Ben to Yaxiu market, which I regularly frequent for extra layers to fight the freezing temperatures. Ben splashed the cash on a variety of items, including a jacket, a coat, 4 tshirts, loads of DVDs, a hat, 4 belts and more, all for less than GBP 140, aided by my haggling. Now - a word of warning for any future visitors to Beijing - if someone else (ie: ME) is haggling on your behalf and secures a (if I may say so myself) fantastically low price, please do NOT add an extra Y10 to it after negotiations have closed - if you want to pay a higher price, you can haggle yourself!! I'm not sure what it is that compels Ben to pay over the odds for something, but it seems to be in his genes.....

We also treated ourselves to a few fancy dinners (more on these later), manicures and massages, and visited several other markets and the 798 art district (more on this later, too). A great week, all in all. Thanks for coming, Ben, and I'm looking forward to February!

X-O-X-O!