Beijing, China 2010

Woke up at 6 am to got meet the APM team at their apartment at 8 am.
Gap transportation hooked us up with a mini van to take us to the Great Wall.
Karen C. was on her way to Chengdu to hold a panda (damn her!) and Nathan had already gone to the wall so that left me, Jim and Joanne, then Justin, Mike and Karen B. from APM team.

It took about 2 hours to get there since we left early and traffic wasn't too bad.
The air was freezing, but it felt really good to be away from the city and the pollution.
The driver dropped us off and we were on our way...

We decided to walk up to the wall and take a cable car down. Apparently you can "toboggan" down the wall, which is like a louge. We said we would do that the next time we go.

Camel rides

Starting our climb

One of many breaks

Which way do we go?

We made it!

I'm on the wall y'all!!!!

Many group pictures later...

Chaobei team is #1 (Jim is wearing his tap team shirt)

Justin celebrates with a beer on the Great Wall

Here is a video Joanne took on the Wall

The cable car ride down was fun

and the view was amazing.

There were many stalls of knick-knacks on the way down

I bought a t-shirt that said "I climbed the Great Wall"

We conquered the Wall!!!

I can't wait to take my mom :)

For dinner - some people were craving American food so we ate at this Irish pub called Molly Malones that had hamburger, tomato soup and chicken salad sandwiches.

Not a bad way to end a great day :)

It is getting harder and harder to keep up with this blog so I will try to bullet point some key things that are happening.

Oct 14th
-At breakfast we witnessed the rescue of the 33 miners that were trapped for over 2 months in an underground mine in Chile.
-Got a local cell phone (they ended up costing about 4x more than they would have in the States)
-Training Day for staff

Intro. to staff

-Store will be expected to do 3 million this first quarter and 12 million/year.
-Set up shipment delivery will be 64,000 units total (about 10,000 a day for 6 days - all in a row)

Kids and Baby staff

-I will get to work with a Visual Merchandiser from JAPAN!!!
-Gap China will be using some Gap and Banana training material, but will be following the Japanese way of merchandising (including carrying the Japanese merchandise)

Joanne and I with Crystal (Men's DM)

-Gap China will carry Gap CONE, which is a special type of premium fabric made specifically for Gap in SF, but is not carried in any of the stores in the states.
-The China stores will have a super special edition premium denim that will be release for only the China store openings. There will only be 3,000 pairs made for all four stores to disburse btwn them and they will retail at 1,969 RMB (which is equivalent to about $300) - we will NOT be getting a discount on these.

Me and Raymond (CM - front of house)

-We will only be getting a 30% employee discount.
-They will not be carrying Long & Lean, Sexy Boot, or Perfect Boot jeans for women.

Women's training session

-Almost all their fits are a skinny or a super skinny (including a skinny boot fit) and a boyfriend.
-Same with men's

Men's Staff

-After work we decided to take the subway out to Hou Hai, which is like a trendy area around a lake. On one side is a strip of bars on the other restaurants.

Giant cotton candy

Green Curry from the restaurant in our hotel...yummy
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Oct 15th

Things I have noticed:
-People here are pretty tall. I am definitely one of the shortest people here.
-They all have the coolest "American" names. My favorite so far are Edie, Kitty, Rock and Stone.
-They have energy saving turn style doors that move someone is walking thru it, but stops when not in use, same with their escalators.
-They have water saving faucets that spray out like a mist.
-They have these bumps and ridges in the side-walk that are suppose to guide the blind
-If you own a car there is one day out of the week that you are not allowed to drive. You read the paper and it tells you (for example) cars with plates ending in 1,4,8 can not drive on Monday, cars ending in 2,5,9 can not drive on Tues etc. This is to help maintain their traffic problem.
-Almost everyday our hotel has been changing the set up in the lobby - like literally EVERYDAY

Today was another training day.

This is Zeus, the VM for Chaobei. He's the cutest thing.

We found out our tentative schedule for the week, but that has been changing daily. Sometimes hourly. Traffic was insane when we got off work so we decided to try the bus. It took us an hour and a half to get home!

But on the way home we finally caught a glimpse of our store!!! Which was pretty exciting.

It is a new mall and they are still in the process of building a new subway route which will opening up right in front of the Gap.
The building has 11 floors. I am not sure what shops are in it right now.

After grabbing a quick bite to eat in our hotel restaurant, we got ready to go out to our first club in China!

We didn't have a chance to get dressed up to go out :(

We met up with the APM team and some of the staff members at Club MIX.

KB, Justin, Me and Crystal (shes so adorable)

Joanne, Mike, Jeff, Karen C. Jim, some guy I haven't met yet and Nathan

It was really fun, I can't wait to go back or try a different club.
Oh and I am pretty sure our cabbie ripped us off.

Oct 16th
Joanne and I met for breakfast and planned out our day off.
We decided to go to the Beijing Zoo & Aquarium.
We took the subway out there and it was super crowded again, but this time I was squished in the corner which provided to be the perfect spot to take these pictures to show you how bad it is.

This makes NYC look like whiny little babies.

Although the zoo's landscape was beautiful the areas with the animals were kind of depressing. We felt bad for all the animals. The conditions weren't that good, some of their cages were tiny and people kept throwing stuff into the animal pens to get their attention.

We were super excited to see the Giant Pandas though. They were so cute.

I decided to take one home with me!

The aquarium was super nice.

It made us think of waiting in line for a ride at Disney.

This is misleading...they told us no touching.

I don't know why they were selling these dolls at the aquarium

After the zoo we were hungry so we decided to grab some food out in Salutin (another trendy area but a lot more Westernized with a lot of shops).
I found an American Apparel in Beijing.