Beijing :)

I meant to write about our trip to Beijing a LONG time ago, but I guess better late than never. So about a month ago, Jon and I, along with Jon's parents Jim and Jane took a short trip to Beijing. It was a good 3 day trip! We travelled there by bullet train... which only took 5 hours! It travelled at 301 km/h or 188 mph. When we arrived, we had an interesting time finding our hotel. We told the taxi driver the name of our hotel and he had no idea where it was! We showed him the address and then even had him call the hotel to verify the location. But we got it all sorted out and we were on our way. When we finally arrived, we realized that the hotel we booked was about a 30 minute metro ride from the city center. We were pretty far out there but it was an adventure!

While in Beijing, we did the typical touristy things: went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, ate the famous Beijing specialty, Peking Duck (北京烤鸭), but our favorite by far was the Great Wall! We went to a less popular part of the wall called Mutianyu (慕田峪), as suggested by our friends. Although it was very hot that day, it was such a great time! Jon and I climbed the stairs up the Wall, while Jim and Jane took the chair lift. There were a lot of stairs! But now we can say we climbed up the Great Wall :) Once we reached the Wall, we took our time walking along the top, climbing more stairs, stopping in the little towers along the way for shade. Our goal was to make it to the highest part of the Wall that we could. And we did! We even explored beyond that point into part of the wall that had not been rebuilt and was technically off-limits. There, we had such a great view! We took a few pictures, breathed in some fresh air and headed back. On the way down the Wall, we got to ride toboggans down! We were in little carts on a metal half pipe with a handle that controlled the speed. If you have ever been on the Dragon Coaster in Labadee, Haiti, it was kind of like that. The only problem was we had people in front of us that were going way too slow! But it was still fun!
Also, we got to meet up with a former classmate from our Chinese class. She has been teaching English in Beijing. We got to go out to dinner with her one evening, it was very nice to get to catch up. We were all saying  that 李老师 (Li laoshi) would be proud (our Chinese teacher).

Well, here are some pictures from our trip! I will put more up later :)

I love this picture because it was so hot outside, all the people wanted to do was find shade and rest from the heat. Everywhere you saw shade, you saw people sitting in it. This is what we saw all across the square :)