A weekend in Beijing

I LOVE Beijing :)

The Great Wall

Yeah....that's almost vertical.

The great wall was magnificent. Kind of a given though, right? Luckily it’s not as humid in Beijing as it is in Shanghai. It was really fun, and our quads got quite the workout….hahaha. There were stairs there that were literally so vertical you had to sit on your bum to get down them. I think the only annoying part is that none of the steps were ever the same size. Some were 2 inches, some were 7 and everything in between. After we got to the second highest tower on that end (not the tallest one there, we went the wrong way for that…oh well) we decided it was probably time to head back (plus we were drenched in sweat), but I wanted to go a bit further to the higher tower and see what it was like. 

 So I headed up the rest of the wall. At the top, however, instead of more wall at the other end of the tower, the wall was kind of abolished and there was a little trail surrounded by shrubbery and trees. I kept going and then the trees parted for a bit and it was absolutely gorgeous!! Oh man, it was breathtaking. These pictures do not even BEGIN to describe how beautiful it was. By then, unfortunately, it was almost time for me to be back at the bus so I had to run.

 But on the way down I had run into 7 girls from London, and they were so fun and cute! We all decided to take pictures together, they met an American, I met some Britts :) Then it was time to run again. I made it in time to the slide (It’s like the Alpine Slide in Park City, Utah that runs all the way to the bottom of the mountain), and it was very fun :) After the great wall we headed to lunch at a yummy restaurant, but I can’t remember what it’s called. I keep wanting to say “we went to a Chinese restaurant” but then I realize that every restaurant is Chinese….hahaha. So yeah, we went to a restaurant :)

The Ming Tombs

This is my friend Shelby. LOVE her. And that's the parasol
I bought because I want one for my future
engagement shoot....you know...when I meet a man
and everything. hahaha

After lunch we got back on the buses and headed to the Ming Tombs. They were surrounded by at least 100 willow trees (mom you would have died), and had this peaceful aura to it. It was so pretty!  They had statues on both sides of Chinese warriors, elephants (life-size), camels, lions, and dragon-looking things all very very large. After the tombs it we headed back to the buses and it was time to go home.

More New friends

 Through the course of the day I have met some pretty amazing girls, and we’ve been having an absolute blast! They’re my same kind of “weird” hahaha. So we all headed to dinner together and had delicious leek and pork dumplings with beef noodles. Mmmmmm :) Afterwards we headed to my hostel (better internet) so we could all tell stories of life and email home. It was a very good day :)

The Summer Palace

The next day we went to the Summer Palace…3 words….fell in love.

Oh my heck! It made me never want to leave! It was so gorgeous, so full of life, and culture.  I went away from the group for a little while because I found some stairs (and because I heard music hahaha). At the top was a brick trail that lead to a little gazebo on a hill that looks EXACTLY like the one on Mulan at the beginning of the movie hahaha. I kept going as the sound of drums got louder and trumpets got crisper. I finally got to a little pavilion FILLED with people singing and playing and clapping, it was so fun! (Mom you would have adored it!). A cute old man with hardly any teeth came up to me and asked where I was from (his English was surprisingly good). He told me that they meet here every morning from 9am to 11am and sing. He said that singing is good for the heart and it makes one happy. I of course agreed, and joined him in the clapping. After a while I decided it was probably a good idea to rejoin the group, so I took a set of stairs that looked like it went in their general direction and ran right into them. 

Locals take giant paintbrush-looking-things and dip
them in water. They then create beautiful calligraphy
all over!

My beautiful friend McCall

A dreamland for a portrait photographer.
Engagements here would be magical!

We waited in a little square for another boat to come, we were going to go to an island. In the course of waiting, I was standing on a set of stairs looking over the square when I saw a guy taking a picture, and it looked like he was trying to get me in it haha (very common). I looked to my right, and saw another man trying to sneak closer subtly so he could be in a picture with an American. Our eyes met and he looked down really quickly, trying to hide what he was doing. I laughed and motioned him forward to take a picture with me. BIG mistake. I was literally stuck for 7 full minutes (which is a long time when you’re doing this) taking picture after picture after picture with person after person. A huge line had accumulated and moms, brothers, friends, children were trading out holding cameras and taking pictures with me, I felt like a celebrity! Hahaha. After a while my smile hurt and I started to walk away and more people started following me and asking me to turn around, it was the funniest thing. They liked my white skin and curly hair. Hahahaha (to be honest though, I looked like I popped out of wizard of oz. hahaha my hair had curled funny that day, and I looked like Dorothy).  I finally got away and we started loading the boat. Off we went on the….sound (I’m gonna call it that, because it kind of looked like the Puget Sound) back to the main island that we arrived on.

The Silk Factory

Next came the silk factory.  Not gonna lie, it was pretty amazing to see how an itty bitty egg turns into a worm, which can make a beautiful 100% silk tapestry. Silk worms create a cocoon by spitting silk that wraps around them. They spit about 1,200 meters of silk. There are two different kinds of cocoons. The smaller ones have only one worm inside, and you can unwind it very easily into thread. The bigger ones have two silk worms inside and because they both spit different directions the silk is tangled so they can’t spin it. Those ones they create into blankets and pillows. They take the cocoons and put them in water, and stretch it over a little arch. They do that with about 18 layers and then they start over. They then take those layers and stretch them out to the size of a blanket. Because there are 18 layers, it doesn’t break apart (kind of like that Sunday school lesson they do with the string). They use about 1000 of these larger layers to make a blanket. It is SOOOOOO soft :)

Pearl and Silk Markets….Time to start your haggling talent!

Oh man, stressed me out SO bad at first. Hahaha. They are huge markets full of anything and everything you could possible want, and they start their prices SUPER high. At first I felt bad going too low, but then I realize their reactions are how they get more money, and most of the time they’re ripping you off by a LOT (I just had to think of all the stories daddy told from when he went to Peru and Costa Rica). Hahaha So I started getting the hang of it, and it was really fun!  I got quite a few of things I really wanted :) (Yes Hope, I got you Red Toms for $8 :D). Afterwards it was time to hit the subway and head home. First time riding the subway went very well!

When we got home I was beat, so off to bed I went :)