Temple of Heaven, Hutong Tour, and Great Wall of China!!

Oh! How fast these two days have gone by!! Now, where do I start?? Lets see. .

Friday started out a cold, wet, and rainy day. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and got ready and went to breakfast. The hotel has some pretty interesting food to eat for breakfast...but we were able to find some fruit and eggs and stuff.

After that we went off to see the Temple of Heaven. It was pretty funny because just outside of where you go there was older people outside doing the Polcka! It was weird to watch them. Also outside you will find people playing poker together, some activitys involving something that looked like a tennis racket and a ball, and dancing will ribbons. And one other thing they did was they would get together and sing songs or play instruments. It was pretty interesting.

Inside the Temple of Heaven we went to all the different temples, and walked around. We bought some souvenirs. We also went to a Olympic store which sold stuff for the Olympics in 2008 that are being held in Beijing. We bought a couple things there.

After that we went to lunch. They put on a show for us. There was dancing and someone played the flute. It was a pretty nice restruant. Then, came the bad part. Squatti Potties!! Ok, so Chinese toilets are a little different than ours...
Their toilets are level with the floor. Like, you have to squat down to use them. It's really gross hard to do. The worst part of all is that they normally don't have toilet paper... so we've learned to always take napkins into the bathroom.

Ok, enough of that. Next we went to the Hutong tour. First though, we went up to the big drum tower. Getting up there took a really high and steep steps! Oh my gosh!! I was afraid every step up that I was going to fall! It was really hard. It was funny because after we got up the climb my mom said, "I thought there would be something more that just drums up here!" Oh well. We got to hear some of the people drum and then we looked outside of the city from the tower.
After that we we to a local home. This I couldn't believe. The rooms were so small! This lady owned this place, and she would let tourists come and eat lunch at her house. So in her very small bedroom she had her bed, table for people to eat on, and her TV. I couldn't believe it!! Then, we went into her kitchen. This was the smallest of all!! It was really no larger than the length of a car. (it looked just about square) It was also very dirty and I couldn't even begin to think of how hard it would be to cook in!!!

After that we took our rickshaws to a local kindergarden. Unfortunatly, the kids weren't there. But we got to look around the kindergarden. We got back into our rickshaws and went back to our bus. The bus took us to the acrobat show. It was amazing what some of the people could do!! They were so strong and could do amazing things! You would have to see it to see what I mean. After that we went back to the hotel. We were all sooo tired when we got back. (That's why I didn't post last night. Sorry!)

Today I slept in a little bit longer. We got up and talked on the phone with Matt, and went to eat breakfast.
Today we didn't have to go anywhere till a little bit later in the day. Yesterday was a really cold, and it was supposed to be colder today, and we didn't pack anything to warm to wear, so we went out to some of the stores looking for coats, mittens, and hats. We found a little store, and oh my gosh! The lady that worked there was so motivated to get us to buy something! It's hard to explain how she was...but she was really pushy and stuff.

We had to go back to the hotel and meet our guids and then we went to eat lunch. We had fried duck and some pork, chicken, egg rolls, and a lot of other stuff. It was really good.
After we ate we went to The Great Wall of China. Now, for some reason I don't remember it being so hard to climb up! Last time it was a breaze! This time, I climbed up to like the third tower and I felt sick. I got light headed and thought I was going to throw up! We stopped for a little bit and then went on. We made it almost to the top, but my dad and my legs were both hurting, so we desided to go down. It was really fun! Several people while we were there asked us for our picture with them. I felt like a TV Star! They would just stand around you talking and looking at one another and wondering who should ask us if they can have our picture with them. Finally someone would go up and say, "Can we have picture with you?". One time this girl asked and we said yes, she just started jumping up and down saying, "Sank you! Sank you!" (Thank you). It was pretty funny!

Well after The Great Wall we went back to the hotel. Now we just have to pack up for tomorrow. We're leaving tomorrow for Yunnan, Mei Lin's province. We don't get her tomorrow, but we will get her the following day. I am so excited though! We get to meed Elsie, our cordinator for this trip. She was our cordinator last trip, and we loved her very much! When we heard she was going to be with us for the about a week and a half on the trip I was so happy!

Well, I'm about to go to bed. I'm so tired!! So, I'll post tomorrow, though I don't think there will be anything interesting to post! But, oh well!

(I'll post pictures in just a minute...it's they're taking a while to post)