Beijing, China - Day 1

I'm back from my amazing trip to China, and am so excited to share everything with you!! We did a ton of incredible things, and the mere thought of blogging about them all is giving me arthritis :) so I've decided to break it up into each day's activities, so to save my fingers and your eyes. Be sure to check back for tomorrow's news!

We started our journey by meeting at 5:30 Saturday morning. It was a frigid walk to the bus stop, and as we waited on the (late) bus to arrive, the sky decided to testify to the cold by dropping thousands of giant snowflakes on our heads...

But if you know me, you know snow makes me happy :)


This was our view at the airport:


But nothing could stop us from being excited about our adventure!


We arrived in Beijing around 11:30 (delayed because of snow) and were met by our tour guide, David. The 22 of us on the tour piled onto a big (heated) bus and were off to our first stop - the Peking Duck Restaurant!

All of the restaurants we ate at served food in a very familial style - tons of dishes piled up on a lazy susan for everyone to rotate and share. At first I liked this dining concept, then I realized the sweet and sour chicken was ALWAYS gone before I got seconds! I decided I'd rather just have my own order :)

This is our server teaching us how to roll a traditional duck-rollup with some weird dumpling-type wrap, veggies, and sauce:


I got to try the first one!


Then I rolled my own - and was the only one at the table who could imitate the actual rollup using only my chopsticks! I think this speaks to my Mexican restaurant background :)

Our next stop was the Temple of Heaven. This temple was built during the Ming dynasty to offer sacrifices to Heaven. It was a really beautiful place.



Me looking scholarly under a 300+ year old Chinese Scholar tree:




Click on this picture and read the inscription about the door - pretty fun history here :)




This is the room where they filled cows' bellies with water, then killed them... the idea was that a well-hydrated sacrificial cow would bring much rain to the area:




Can you read it? Me either...


If you look in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see that I stood where Nixon did before me... And many other world leaders:


Our next stop was a traditional tea-house:


We got to taste all kinds of different teas (my favorite was the oolong with ginseng - if you find any back home, try it!) including hand-rolled teas and a special tea that, when brewed, blooms!







We also learned how to properly hold our teacups to be real ladies (bring on the jokes, CJ):





Our last stop before dinner was a Chinese circus show called "Flying Acrobat Show." This show involved amazing acrobatic feats and actual (well-trained) cockatiels and parrots flying around... A pretty stellar show (during which I started dozing off, which more accurately reflects how totally exhausted I was than how yawn-inducing the show was... because it wasn't. It was awesome.). They didn't allow photography so I only have this picture of the building outside:



And this of Jordan and I being confused when we lost our tour guide for a moment:


Then we had dinner (Chinese food again!)... A word about Chinese food in China - it's EXTREMELY similar to Chinese food in America!!! Way more similar than Chinese food in Korea (which seems to have missed the mark)... And it's delicious... even after 5 straight meals of it!

After dinner, Jordan and I dragged our weary bones up to our hotel room and went to sleep - anxiously awaiting the 7:00 am wake-up call so we could prepare for GREAT WALL day!

That's all for Day 1. Be sure to stay tuned for the continuing adventure! In the meantime, here's some bonus pics for you!

The Puppet Palace where I was hoping we'd be eating:


Loving the bus ride:


And the traditional Chinese door-knocker... it was on all the doors at the ancient buildings we went to. I want one. It tells potential visitors, "If you're knocking on this door, it better be good! Otherwise I'll eat your knuckles!"


Love you all!