Update from China, Part 1: Beijing

Hello all,

So, here’s the start of my first update.  I copied this from the mass E-mail/facebook note I sent everyone, so for those of you who read the update, this isn’t anything new.  See Below:

After the menacing 14 hour plane ride (I managed to sleep for 8 hours on it, yay!), we had a big dinner where they kept piling on the food!  We had some Beijing duck (a specialty), as well as various beers to choose from.  Afterward, we chilled in our foreign student dorms at the Beijing College for Political Science (which seemed kind of questionable) until about midnight Chinese time until we passed out.
 
Today we woke up around 7 (and Kristen and I felt like we were hit by a bus since the mattresses were really stiff) and went to breakfast at a place right down the way from where we stayed.  It was quite funny that we were approached by many of the patrons in there to take pictures with them (I’ve never felt like such a celebrity—or so out of place).
 
After that we went to Tianenmen square, where we were further pursued by either people who wanted to take pictures with us, or who wanted to sell stuff to us.  Altogether it was remarkable just how LARGE the square is!  Next we went into the forbidden city, which was also HUGE!  I obviously won’t be able to put all the pictures in here, so I will upload them all later.
 
Next we went out the North Gate of the Forbidden City to Jinshan park, where we climbed Jinshan hill to get a birds-eye view of the Forbidden City and Beijing itself.  There was also too many opportunities for ridiculous antics.

The last thing we did after eating dinner (that was around 6pm) is find a bar and have a drink.  It took us about 20 minutes (and asking a local) in order to find the bar, but we finally found one tucked away and had a drink and enjoyed the fun atmosphere.  I tried my first “pink lady”, which was good!  We’ll probably be doing that more often : )

Thus ends my first update…I will post the same pictures I posted last time, plus some new ones as well.  Those will follow this update as time goes on.  I will eventually have all of my pictures up (I counted and I have exactly 1500 pictures) once I can find a hosting site that will easily let me put that many photos on without paying a lot of money.

Enjoy!