July 11, 2009

wow! I am in china! it's crazy, I still can't believe it. It is a totally different world over here. Different food, smells and oh my gosh the humidity is bad. it's been overcast and a little rainy so we haven't had the full blow of the humidity and heat yet. it's not going to be very pleasant when we do :/ This morning we had breakfast at our hotel-which by the way is really nice. It actually has stores, a restaurant, and this theatre thing in the bottom. Anyways, we tried some interesting food at breakfast. There was a kiwi type looking thing but didnt have any taste, go figure that one out? There was also this wierd little berry looking thing but it ended up being a hard outside and when you peeled in off there was a soft onion looking thing with a pit. It tasted a little like a pear but way better. It was very interesting. We went and visited a ton of stuff today. We went to this huge plaza that is in front of the Forbidden City, and there were seriously thousands of people. There were a lot of people selling cool stuff like umbrellas and fans so we got some cool stuff like that for cheap. oh ya, and some lady came up to me and wanted a picture with me, it was random but I felt special :) ha ha Then we went into the Forbidden City and oh my gosh it is huge! It has like five outer layers of buildings and in the middle is where the emporer and most important people would be. but in each layer it's like a whole plaza and just filled with nothing but touring people. The buildings are what seperate each layer, but it seriously took us probably three hours to walk through. At the end of the Forbidden City, there is a big garden called the Emperial Garden and it has a bunch of cool trees and way cool flowers, carp in little pools, really cool rocks and buildings. It was a really cool place to go visit but there were tons of people there! After the garden we went to the silk factory, It was really interesting. I didn't realize that silk came from the cacoons of the silk worm. It's a very interesting process. Those cacoons can really stretch and they are really strong too. They had a bunch of dresses, ties, shirts, etc. They are so pretty! We got my sister a cute little red dress and my mom and i white shirts to go through the temple with :) we are excited! We want to find my sister a white one too and then we could be matchy when we go to the temple. After we ate, we went to the great wall of china! It was so crazy! I always imagined it being a flat wall and and you could just walk acrossed it with no problem, but the whole thing is steep steep stairs! We walked up as far as they would let us go but they made us stop because there was lightning. I counted the steps on the way up and I counted around 1100! and that was only on the way up, going down was almost just as bad. The steps are so uneven and so far apart. When you walk up them your knees go up almost to your hips. It was a really long and hard climb. My calfs and hamstrings were burning like crazy! I thought I would'nt get much excercise being over here but wow, that can count for at least a couple days worth! :) It was worth the climb though. When we finally got back to our hotel almost two hours later, we went and ate at a nearby McDonalds :) It was actually good though. It was nice to have familiar food. In the same building they had a market and downstairs a bunch of shops. It's kind of funny because people will always try to sell you things and you can totally bargain with them. If they ask you to pay 50 for it, you can usually get it down to at least 30 if not like 25. It's really funny but it totally works :) anyways, I better go cause we have to meet our group at 5:30 to get on our plane to Nanning where my sister is :) but we won't get her until the next day :( I don't know if I can wait that long but I guess I will survive.

Brooke