Thursday, February 21, 2008

the dragon has landed (long post)
yes boys and girls, im in china now. whooo it was a long way over here. landed in beijing and were met by an alumnus from our school (hereafter referred to as shane). hes been taking care of us and is going to get us settled at the school. were leaving for harbin (the city well be living in) tomorrow night (night train).

anyway, today we went on a walking tour of beijing. all the touristy stuff. we started off at tiananmen square, which i hope youve heard of. thats where the people (a lot of students)protested in '89 and were run down by tanks. its the largest square in the world, and its absolutely vast. after that, we went through a park into the forbidden city (aka the imperial palace). wow, that was cool. ive got a lot of pictures of it. the architecture is just amazing. absolutely beautiful. granted, after an hour youre kind running out of things to get excited about. but the three of us wandered around in there for awhile.

after that we went up a small mountain (i forgot the name) and had lunch at the temple at the top. shane had gotten lunch for us. it had warmed up enough by that time to be pleasant. so then we wandered back down and went to beihai park, which was also very nice. huge park, lots of gates, pagodas, a lake, and such. went through there and then got some hot chocolate/coffee and went to another little square. there were some musicians playing erhu, which has a really unique sound. heehee, and elizabeth was accosted by a guy giving massages for about $3. it was so funny, the guy was 79 and was so enthusiastic. he knew what he was doing tho, since he noticed and fixed elizabeths neck problems.

so then we went to dinner at a nice restaurant. man there was so much food, the center-piece of which was peking duck. ooooh it was good. im afraid i might get burned out on chinese food pretty quick, but man its good for now. um..and now were back in our hotel. its a little cozy place (quaint, really) on one of the lakes in hohai. sharing a room with elizabeth, since we thought we wouldnt make paul share a room with one of the ladies.

lots of fireworks going off today. its the last day of spring festival (new years) and thus the last day to shoot them off. not just firecrackers. really big set-off-car-alarms type fireworks.

ok thats enough for now. more eventually.

{inu}
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