WELCOME TO CHINA!!!
After a early morning wake up, followed by a bus ride, plane ride and customs. We finally arrived in China! It was a little strange seeing all the cameras they have "watching" you as you enter the country, but other than that it didn't strike me as that strange. The whole "communist" thing wasn't that big of a deal, to me. Others were very ready to leave the country and never come back. Oh well.
Our first stop was lunch and as we found out your choices for beverages were Coke, Sprite and Beer! Melissa LOVED that there was the beer option! She had to buy the bottle they only gave you one free cup.
The meals, they ALL looked like this. And we pretty much ate all the same food, EVERY meal. Just a different version of the same thing each time.
Funny little car with eye lashes, couldn't pas it up!
The old part of Beijing, I think that our tour guide told us they were tearing all this down to make way for "new" Beijing.
This was funny and so China. The car is on a lift so that another car can park below it! Crazy! And kind of cool too!
This was in Tenamen Square. You couldn't, 1. Sing in a group 2. Dance in a group 3. protest without the polices approval, and the list went on. Crazy! The cameras on the light post really got me. But really this was a little boring of a stop, just a big square, and they don't give you any of the real history of the place. But what are you going to do in a communist country!
Melissa, me and Lorri in front of the picture of Mao.
These pants CRACKED us all up! While potty training a child you just put him in these pants and when he has to go there is no need to pull pants down, you just squat and go. We saw some where there had been material shoved in the hole.
This is the gate way into the Forbidden City. The Palace of the royal family.
This picture really cracks me up. First off, the flag you see in the picture is from our group, it says China Fantasy, right in front of Mao! And boy does our tour guide, Shelley who is holding the flag look excited about that!
Inside the first of MANY gates.
These lions were everywhere, in front of every home, I think... or at least they were supposed to be. But this one was the female, you can tell b/c she has her paw on the baby lion, the male had his paw on the world, I think.
If you are interested here is a little history on one of the buildings.
These pots were used to catch water when it rained so that they would have water in the case of a fire. They were stationed all over the place.
This hole under it was where they put the fire that kept the water from freezing in the winter.
All the amazing colors painted on the ceilings. The colors where nice and bright, they had been painted recently due to the Olympics being in town.
I guess they didn't get back this far in the painting.
This is where the last Emperor of China grew up for a few years until he was banished. Shelley kept telling us to watch "The Last Emperor Of China" it's supposed to be really close to the true story.
These little statues all mean something, come to find out, everything "means" something in China, I just have NO idea what it all means!
These rocks were placed here! It's a garden. They went out in search of these rocks. Strange. It was a little weird to me.
This was as close as we got to anything Olympic. This is the birds nest.
That night we had Peking Duck. It was really good. Wish we could have had it every meal! :)
Then after dinner, when we were so tired I could have passed out within seconds we went to this pretty cool acrobatics show. The coolest/craziest thing was when they put five guys on motorcycles into a ball and they all rode around. It was a little frightening. It was crazy loud in there, but despite the loudness, I almost fell asleep several times, that's how tired I was after that LONG day!
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