This morning we woke up and baked our bags ready to leave Beijing, although not before a full day of activities. We first woke up and were taken to a certain area of town where we were driven around on rickshaws and shown some of the sites. We learned about the entrance ways to home and buildings and how you can tell who lives there by how high the threshold is and how many pillars the door has.
We were then taken to a traditional Chinese home, which is separated into different buildings where different members of the family live, with a courtyard in the middle. Not many of these homes still stand as it has become more modern and all generations of the family no longer live together, many have moved into apartments in the cities. We met the man who grew up in the house we were standing in and whose father still lived there. We even learned that this house was very famous because of this mans grandfather being a famous general. The man also said that when the Beijing Olympics took place that Michael Phelps and his team members had also visited this very house. I had now been standing in two places where Michael Phelps and other amazing American athletes had been standing I thought this was pretty neat.
After visiting the home we were taken to a bell tower that over looked the city. When leaving the bell tower I again saw a group of people playing the hacky sack game. There was a group of one business woman, a cop, two men and a young girl all playing together. After this we were taken to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was neat to finally see what I thought of as classical Chinese architecture. After visiting these sites we were next taken to a Kindergarten. When we walked in I first felt as though the children were on display because another tour group of older British people were leaving as we were entering. We went into the playground where none of the children seemed fazed that we were there, they didn’t look at us want to play with us or anything. So we all slowly made our way over and attempted to play with the kids. It took a while to get them involved but we finally did it. Courtney and I had the best luck with some of the even younger kids. I sat and played ball with a little girl who wore glasses for about 10 or 15 minutes. It was then time for the kids to go back inside and time for us to leave. Next we went to lunch which we were all ready for. It had been a long busy morning and many of us were starving. Although luckily the meals were like all the others and full of food, we even had duck!!
Once we were done with lunch we drove a few hours to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace involved many stairs once again but was very pretty with water ways, rock paths, and small shrines or temples. As we made our way down the backside of the palace we went down to an area that overlooked a pretty bay. We all kept laughing that we were visiting the Summer Palace in winter and wondered how much hotter it would be during the summer. Before getting back on the bus to head to the train station the entire group of us had all bought some hacky sack things along the way and we stopped to play a few games.
Finally we arrived at the train station where we would take an overnight train to Shangai. Jeff, Erika, Kelly, Courtney and I ran to get some McDonalds to take on the train for dinner. I think I have had McDonalds on this trip more times than I have ever had it in the U.S. We then said by to our tour guide Jane and entered the train station. The train station was the biggest I have ever seen and even reminded me of an airport with the way security was run with x-ray machines and so forth. Courtney, Erika, Kelly and I found our car and our room. The room was what I thought it would be very small with bunk beds and a small table. The entire group of 120 of us were on this train and it was like a fun sleep over hopping from room to room hanging out with one another on the 13 hour train ride. The beds on the train were just as hard as the beds in the hotel and almost as hard as the great wall. By the end of the trip my body was pretty sure I had spent four nights on the great wall not just the one because of how hard the beds were.
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