Hey all! Many of my loyal and faithful friends have been telling me to start blogging about my adventures and misfortunes of being a light sensitive dyslexic traveling abroad so I thought I would oblige them. If you scroll on down you will notice I did some what of a blog while living and traveling Euro Land but when my netbook crashed that had two of the latest blog posted save on it I gave up. I wrote WAY to much for each post and I am sure no one read it so I will try and summarize more this time around and keep things short. So here we go....
Wednesday April 4th I arrived in the land of ping pong and pandas! The last 30 minutes of our flight into China was ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE for me. It got pretty bumpy and I was the center of entertainment for most people around me because I was holding a waste bag incase I ...... got sick and I had a folded bag in my other hand which I used to fiercely fan myself. Simon and Michela thought this was hilarious because when the turbulence wasnt that bad I had a steady fanning pace but when it started up again I would fan myself faster. I got super white and almost passed out but I didn't chunder, which is great!
So We decided to make our layover in Beijing a week long instead of a couple of hours because China is cool! Ask Jackie Chan! I also REALLY wanted to see the Great Wall and try and do a run on it.
Some highlights of our trip so far have been:
Becoming some what of a celebrity! Whenever we went out we got at least three or four groups of people asking to take pictures with us. It was great, everyone looks at us when we walk around and groups of girls giggle and wave.
The Forbidden City was really cool. I was really impressed with the sheer decadence of the city that only about 25 people had permission to enter for hundreds of years.
The Front Gate that sits opposite of Tienmen Square (which we went up)
A view of Tienmen Square from the front gate
These two shots were taken from Jingshan Hill, which was at one point part of the Forbidden City
I thought The Forbidden City was cool but it was NOTHING in compared to the Summer Palace. This get away on the outskirts of Beijing was where the emperor and empress use to go to take a breather from there hard and demanding life. I was insane! It is essentially the palace of Versailles of China! We walked around for about four hours and still didn't see it all. Here are some pictures.
The Silk Bridge
After I took this picture a group of people ask if they could take a picture of Mick Mack in the same pose haha. She did it. Then they asked if they could get a picture with all of us so we of course obliged. After we took the picture with them tw of the guys in their group did the biggest high five in celebration! Haha.
Posing on the Silk Bridge
Simon and I ran up to do a Tebow on this bridge then tons of people started taking our picture and when we tried to break the pose they asked us to do it again haha.
hahaha this kid had a huge rip in his pants and was wearing no underwear so whenever he bent over to pick up pebbles (which was quite often) he would FULL ON moon everyone. A family noticed it and started taking a ton of pictures. Soon there was like 20 people taking pics of this kids but and his dad just stood there watching haha. So weird.
The best for last! The Great Wall of China! One of the man made wonders of the world and it is obvious why when you get there! over 6 thousand kilometers of connected wall! When it was being built about 2 million people were used in its construction which is nothing now considering china has a population of about 1.3 billion but back then these two million people were 1/5 of China's population! 1 million people died in the making of the wall and their bodies were used as filler for the wall.
We went to the Mutianyu portion of the wall which is the most popular in Beijing because of its many towers and mountainous setting. Lifegaurd Chimone, Catnip (Simon and Michela) and I went up to the first tower on a gondila and then hiked to an un-kept portion of the wall, which was super cool to see. Erosion had certainly taken its tole on the wall and plants and tress were growing up out of different parts. We then went walking on the rebuild portion which is about 3.6 KM in length for this portion of the wall. When you look across the mountains you could almost see the end of the portion of wall which is marked with a larger tower. I REALLY wanted to get to it and do the whole stretch but Michela pointed out we only had under two hours left until we had to leave.
STEPS!
On the unkept portion of the wall
A disheveled tower
Here are some more pictures I snapped while on my run:
The other side of the unkept wall.
Here are two other quick highlights of Beijing:
Eating Peking Duck, which was SOOO GOOD!
Eating scorpions, which actually tasted really good!
We had a great time in Beijing and met some great Brits, which we went out partying with. Simon and I went searching for a ping pong table so we could settle a dispute once and for all but Simon got terrible directions and just took us to a subway stop and said "Ok..... it's somewhere around here" hahaha.
We stayed at the Happy Dragon Hostel WHICH WAS AMAZING!!!!! I would highly suggest it to anyone visiting Beijing.
I am currently having a lot of problems with my cameras memory card so that is why it took me so long to do my first post but I am trying to fix it as we speak. There is a lot more great stories to come! Thanks for reading!
