Back from Beijing

As the title says, I'm back from the northern end of China. I'm pretty tired, but I'll try to give as best a summary of the experience as possible. Essentially, we left Thursday night on the overnight train to Beijing. What was rather scary for me was the bed that was supposedly very uncomfortable was a heck of a lot better than my regular bed here in China. Yeah...go figure. Didn't get to sleep much, though, because of just general travel anxiety and so on. We arrived Friday morning, ate some food, went to our hotel, got checked in, then immediately went out on the town. Our first stops were the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square. Although we didn't spend nearly as long there as I personally would have liked, I still got a good feel for it all and enjoyed it pretty well. Our next stop was the Olympic stadium, aka the Bird's Nest. Even though I have no interest in the Olympic stuff at all, that was also very interesting. Only problem with that was we had to wait for one of our group member's friends there for a LONG time, and it was getting cold! I thought my feet were going to freeze off. Afterward, we went out for Peking duck, the rest of the group went out drinking, and I proceeded to fall asleep back at the hotel. The next day, I had originally planned on visiting the Great Wall, but no plans were set, so that was delayed for the day. Instead, we spent most of the day on our feet, exploring Beijing, eventually ending up at a Beijing alleyway (otherwise known as a "hutong" 胡同) called Liulicheng where we bought many items (I'm not telling you what I bought because some of it may be gifts for people) and explored around a bit more. After eating dinner, the rest of the group wanted to go out drinking again, so I went along. It turned out to be a pretty big bust, though; nobody was satisfied with anyplace we went to, and by the time we were figuring out that we needed to go to a completely different area, those of us going to the Great Wall the next day needed to be back at the hotel sleeping. So we just went back and slept.

Now, my Great Wall experience: PHENOMENAL. The Great Wall is one of the places that I've wanted to go to all my stinkin' life (another being the Sydney Opera house, for some odd reason), and I was not disappointed. It was cold, the hike was long, and even for not being tourist season, it was crowded...but it was so worth it. I can't even describe how I felt. I really could have spent all day there, but alas, we needed to head back and catch our train. Our train ride back was honestly too warm, and we had a few hardcore snorers, so when we arrived in Suzhou at 7:45 this morning, it was pretty much clear to all of us that class was not an option. Since then, I've just been uploading photos for you fine folks to enjoy:







And now I'm off to get some food!

再见！
杜楷