Back from Beijing

Hey everyone,

Sorry I haven't updated quicker since Beijing, this week has been crazy. I've had two mid-terms, homework, and lab this week.

Beijing was so fun! It was a packed 4 days of sightseeing and walking, with very little sleeping. I'm pretty sure I slept 21 hours over 4 nights. I put up the best pictures on here but I made a picassa where I am uploading all my pictures. You can see them all here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/katiebevier

We left on Wednesday night, using every form of transportation possible. We took a taxi to the metro to a train (maglev) to a plane to a bus. Haha. We took the maglev from the Shanghai subway to the airport. The ride was only about 8 minutes long. It went 300 km/hr (about 180 mph!) and we weren't even on the fastest train. The fastest one goes 450 km/hr.

Once we got to the airport we took a bus to a location that was supposed to be close to our hostel (or so it seemed on the map...) but I'm pretty sure the bus dropped off in a different location so we walked for about an hour and a half at 2:00 AM to find our hostel. We were walking down sketchy alleys trying to find it and finally we did on one of the alleys. Luckily in the morning the alley was nearly not as sketchy.

Our first day in Beijing we went to The Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. The forbidden city had lots of temples and alleys. We learned in culture class that the forbidden city in chinese directly translates to 'the purple forbidden city.' There wasn't any purple though, everything was mostly just yellow and red. The Temple of Heaven had lots of temples too but was less crowded. Below is a picture of us in front of Tienanmen Square.

Inside The Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven.

Friday we went to the Great Wall at Simatai. The Great Wall is literally the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life. The views from the top were amazing and you could see it streching forever into the distance. We climbed one side until they wouldn't let us go any farther and then we went the other way, where the wall was not as restored. Then we took a zipline to the bottom.

Everyone at the top.

After the Great Wall we stopped in a tea shop next door to our hotel and the owners made us some tea. They let us try like 10 different kinds and kept making pot after pot for us. They even kept the store open an hour late while they were serving us the tea. It was really nice, and of course I had to buy some tea afterwards. I got lychee black tea. The guy in the white shirt in this picture was the one making us the tea.

The next day we went to the Summer Palace, which was where the emperors would go for vacation. It was really pretty with a big lake in the middle but required lots of walking (which we were not too pleased about because we were sore from the Great Wall). There were also lots of temples and shrines there too.

In the afternoon we stopped at the Olympic village and saw the bird's nest and the water cube.

Saturday we went to the Lama Temple. I liked the lama temple a lot. There was insense burning everywhere as offerings so it smelled really good. There was also a huge buddha carving 18 m (60 feet) tall that was so cool. It was carved from a single piece of wood, which was unreal. The thing had to be about 20 feet in diameter at the bottom. This is a picture of a woman making an offering to one of the buddhas.When we got home we were exhausted, but the trip was definitely worth it. Seeing the Great Wall was definitely my favorite part and a once in a lifetime experience I will never forget.

Be sure to check out my picassa for all the pictures.

Check back soon!

Katie