China!

Journal #38 April 1, 2009

Today I woke up early and tried to find a phone card to call home. Unfortunately, I was not successful, it is very hard to communicate in Chinese because I know no Chinese and the Chinese don't know any English. I did go to a super market that was pretty cool though. People were lined up to get in at 8:30 in hopes of getting some fresh meat. There were probably well over 100 people in line.

When I headed back to the hotel I got on the bus and we headed to Tiananmen Square. This is where the entrance to the Forbidden City, many monuments, government buildings, and where the last ruler is persevered. The square was quite big and had a lot of tourists. After walking around for a while we headed to the entrance of the Forbidden City. They gave us headsets and we were on our own to tour the city. This is where the emperor lived during the summer. The palace was huge!!! I was not even close to going to each place because we only had an hour to get from one end to the other. When we all met at the end we realized that two girls were not with us. We waited for an hour for them and decided to leave. This made us late for lunch. But lunch was also very good, it was family style again with the lazy susan.

After lunch we went on a scenic cruise on the Beihai Lake. This lake was very pretty and our boat was shaped like a dragon. This boat took us to bar street. This street was so pretty and was surrounded by a lake. This is where all the partying goes on at night. There were probably around 100 bars. When we got to the end we were picked up by rickshaws and driven around the city. They took us in neighborhoods to see how people lived. We also were able to go into someone's house and got a tour of it. It was a huge square with around 5 different buildings in it. Each building served a different purpose, a kitchen, bedroom, eating room, and so on.

We then headed to the bell tower where we learned how to make Chinese tea and how to drink it. Sadly, we were not able to go to the top of the bell tower because waiting on the girls made us late :( We then headed to dinner which was family style again and then to an acrobatic show. The acrobatic show was amazing. I had never seen some of the stuff they did. Men jumping onto of each other around 15 women getting on one bike, and soooo much more. I have some great videos. After the acrobatic show I went to bed because I was exhausted.

Love
Michelle