Day 2 - Beijing, Inner Circle

After a long school year and much anticipation of this trip, we have finally arrived in Beijing! We had an early start to the morning today, many of us were up before the start of breakfast at 6:30. We did not have to leave the hotel for the Summer Palace until 8:30, giving us some downtime before the official start of our jam packed day. Just as we were walking out of breakfast, a group of Tibetan monks assembled for their breakfast in the courtyard of our hotel. I had just bought a new camera, and really wanted to take some pictures of them. Mr. Sham, Lizzy, and I went out and asked to take their photo. We ended up sitting with them for about a half an hour as they ate their breakfast. The monks did not speak English, so Lizzy and I put our Chinese together to talk about everything and anything our limited vocabulary would allow us to. It was so exciting to put my Chinese to use and actually understand most of what they said.  Thanks Mr. Gao and Jiang Lao shi!

We then took a bus to the Summer Palace where we walked around, explored the grounds, and learned the history behind the gardens.

After a quick and delicious lunch of traditional Chinese food, we headed towards the Lama Temple. At the Temple, we learned about the Buddhist religion. We then were able to shop and explore the streets outside the Temple. Many of us practiced our bargaining skills and bought souvenirs to bring home. After shopping, we visited a traditional chinese home. We learned paper cutting, calligraphy, how to make dumplings, and all about cricket fighting. We then had a nice dinner, and afterwards walked the streets of a hutong to shop and observe the Chinese culture. 

Overall, today was a fun day full of Chinese culture.  I cant wait to start again tomorrow.

- Samantha Erman '18

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 5 - Olympic Sized Forbidden City

Day 5 was our final day in Beijing, and we were fortunate enough to have visited the Olympic village. As we arrived, we were welcomed by the official Olympic music that was played for the olympians in 2008. We saw two of the main stadiums where the athletes competed, The Beijing National Stadium and the National Aquatics Center. Although it was raining, we still made the most of our visit by cracking jokes, listening to music, and attempting to talk to the natives. It was a lot of fun. The Aquatics Center, in particular, was amazing to visit because they had persevered it so well throughout the years. There was an enormous waterpark as well as a concert hall, along with the pools. We saw the practice facilities of the athletes and it was truly a fascinating experience and one that we will not soon forget. - Georgy Faltaous '18 The day initially could be described with one word: rain. It was pouring for the first portion of our day; people were soaked, wanting to just go back...
Read more

Day 7 - Second World Wonder of the Week

Today was our first full day in Xi'an. The previous evening I came down with a stomach virus, but luckily it did not affect me today, allowing me to write this blog.  After sleeping in this morning, we went to a Terra-cotta Warrior workshop, where we made our own clay warrior figurines.  Following a little shopping, we piled back into the bus and drove over to the Terra-cotta Warrior museum. At the museum, we were able to check out a predominately warrior site in pit 1 of 3.  These recently discovered warriors have a very rich history dating thousands of years back.  From here we went to lunch in the museum which featured "stretchy" noodles. The afternoon featured both the Terra-cotta Warrior museum as well as a show with dinner.  We saw pits 2 and 3, half size chariots, and even watched a 10 minute cultural film on the warriors. After spending a total of about 3 hours at the museum, we went back to the hotel to rest and freshen up before our evening show. Fi...
Read more