I went to China...to eat Pizza??

As one of our last orientation activities, we were sent out on Part 1 of Mystery Beijing. Basically what this means is that we are given a slip of paper with a location in Beijing...and we have to find it. So I paired up with another girl, Caitlin, and off we went.

<---This was our slip of paper. I knew the 2nd and 3rd characters from the left (tong and bie) and the words in the parentheses (HoHai). HoHai is a bar district made up of hutongs (alleyways). It's pretty much a tourist trap.
Now, the catch was that in order to find this location we had to use ourselves and our Chinese ONLY. No consulting with other IES students, no talking to Chinese students in English...and we weren't supposed to take cabs (ugh). So Caitlin and I set off, and asked the 1st person we saw if they knew the locations. The answer was no. The Second person who we asked read the name outloud...Hutong Bizza! Bizza = Pizza!!

So off we went to HoHai to find Hutong Pizza Restaurant! We got to HoHai (...no comment on how we got there...) and then had to find this place. None of the Chinese kids we asked knew. We did however get many, many offers to take a rickshaw ride, at, of course, an enormous price. Anyway - eventually one guy said he knew, and told us to follow him. It was really quite sketchy - a random guy taking us down deserted alleyways...but lo and behold he didn't a) rape us or b) demand money for his time in taking us there. (Honestly...b was a possibility...) This is Hutong Pizza!
Here is a photo of us -->
We just ordered snacks and drinks (pizza's are ridic expensive...and I really don't eat pizza anyway...) but it was so nice to be in a great environment and seeing what is off the beaten track (kinda).

They even had a Western-Style toilet! Score!