Culture shock in Beijing.

Well 5:00am we headed off on our 12 hour bus ride to Beijing! I slept part of the beginning. I cant tell if my back and hips are sore from the luggage or the plane and bus rides but either way, im bummed I left my ib profen in Weihai. The bus ride was long... Sam, my roomie gets motion sick so she takes drammamean however thats spelled and is always out like a rock so my buddy was asleep but I was able to talk to and meet more people in my group. Specifically, the across the aisle buddy Ben. He is here with his friend josh they are here together and have stuck together. I tried to talk to ben at first but he didnt seem talkative but then he started to open up more and I found out he is in the military!! holy cow! It was also his birthdy today so we sang happy birthday to him.
 one stop we made to fill up on gas there were two guys playing ping pong so we went in to watch and a girl in our group sarah decided she wanted a try! So she walked over and one guy gave her a paddle and along with sam (the boy) and mark, got owned by some 70 year old in table tennis! Haha go figure right?
Well we got back on and went to our hotel... what. The. Heck. After Korea, we were so excited to have one last western shower, toilet and bed. Boy were we in for a shock. Pretty sure we all ( at least the group of girls I was with Hannah, maddie, sam, rochelle and christa and I) all got culture shock like a brick to the face. Hannah and maddie were in tears cuz their rooms smelled so bad, in fact I believe I might have heard more than one swears. but then carl. Our guide for the trip who speaks excellent english and is awesome. Switched their room and then we had a chat trying to decide if its better to die by hanging or drowning while I was making more than one trip to the bathroom ,my stomach was killing me and I thought I was going to die from that, but we got cut off by the head teachers saying we needed to get on the bus to go eat. Our tour is super cheap. $300 for 4 nights in Beijing with a bus and a tour guide etc. but that gave our guide Carl a $2 budget for food. So he asked us if we wanted to go to a place that he wouldn't eat (told us if we did, then dont eat the meat because he can't promise that we wont get sick from it) or we could all pitch in $6 and go somewhere safe... uhm is that a question?
we got to dinner and it was like panda express. We wanted to hug carl. Seriously we were so relieved to have a decent meal that we were ready to cry. Yupp there are girls for you. Crying one min saying take me home to crying because food is so good. Well after dinner we went to the hotel and tip toed around the room trying to get ready for bed to sleep.
To be honest, I think going from one place to another so fast, with food so hard on well, my stomach I guess, expecting a Korea hotel and coming up on this awful room and less than tasty food by a group of tired and hungry girls was asking for trouble. Carl is lucky to be alive and all he was doing was his job! And at a discount because he is friends with our native coordinator kelly back at the school! Oh man. Im not gonna lie. That sucked so bad. And I still havent showered but I am trying to see this as a tender mercy because now, our once gross apartments back in weihai seem like gold.