Guess where we were this morning?  We spent all morning hiking the Great Wall, well part of it anyway.  It's a beautiful area in the mountains about 40 minutes outside of Beijing.   The Great Wall is about 3000 miles long all the way across China and only 10% of it is still standing.  It took over 200 years to build the whole thing!  Lin says that the people who died building the wall were buried inside it - so they call it the "longest cemetary" in China.  Kinda morbid isn't it?  

     

As you can see it is very steep so I didn't attempt to go very far.  Yes, I am getting lazy in my old age, I admit it.  I seriously thought about attempting it, but after hearing that it takes two hours to climb to the top I had to re-think that. 

I did make it up to the first level, though.  If I ever reached the top I don't think I would have been coming back down.  Rachel said it was too bad they didn't have a banister to slide down.  Wouldn't that be a ride?   Since it was a holiday today there were SO many people at the wall.  Some you really had to wonder what they were thinking because I saw women in skirts and high heels climbing the Great Wall.  Ouch!!  

The rest of the afternoon we spent at the Summer Palace.  It's 700 acres of lake and gardens, for the Emperor only of course.   I could have spent all day there - it was so gorgeous and peaceful.  I can see why the Emperor chose all the best places for himself!  Lin told us that the last Emperor was only a child when he came into power so his mother was the one who actually ruled the country.  She placed him under house arrest in one part of the palace for the rest of his life.  So no matter how beautiful, a prison is still a prison I suppose.  How sad!

Madness and Mayhem today

It's a three day holiday in China this weekend - the Autumn Moon Festival is taking place (whatever that all entails) and everyone is out playing tourist.  We spent the day at Ti'anamen Square and the Forbidden City, and it felt like everyone else in China spent the day there as well.  People everywhere!   And they all looked the same!  Like thousands of little black ants crawling all over the square.....

Rachel and I are standing in front of the gate to the Forbidden City where  the emporers lived.  The Forbidden City is about 100 acres of courtyards and buildings.  It's said to have 10,000 rooms inside the Forbidden City.  Our tour guide, Lin, said they consider a room to be any area that is surrounded by four pillars in each corner - so they could be huge reception rooms or tiny little closets.  It's said that a baby born in the palace could sleep in a different room every night and they would be 27 years old by the time they slept in every room.  I'd hate to clean that house!

On the gate into the Forbidden City are these gold knobs that you rub for good luck.  Some have been rubbed so much that the gold has worn off. 

The detail and architecture of these buildings are so beautiful and absolutely amazing.  Especially when you consider that all the detail work was done by hand hundreds of years ago.  The Forbidden City took 14 years to build.  They are in the process of renovating the whole Forbidden City and it is estimated to take 16 years to finish the renovations.  Talk about your extreme home makeover! 

Look at the scope of this place - it's HUGE!!!!!  How would you like to walk this place all day, every day.  It took us about two hours to get from one end to the other.  At that rate I think I'd have to find a new room to sleep in every night because there's no way I'd make it back and forth every day!

......Not to mention the stairs!  Back in the day there was no such thing as wheelchair accessible but today there is - you just have to be inventive.  The Chinese people are very resourceful - but it was SO not a good day to wear a skirt! 

So we FINALLY make it to the Inner Palace (I think the Chinese had a good strategy to hide the Emporer in the middle of 100 acres because the enemy would get tired of storming courtyard after courtyard and they'd quit before they ever get to the Emporer!) and found the Imperial Gardens.  This is a beautiful pagoda in the middle of lots of gnarled old Cypress trees (many being hundreds of years old) where the Emporer and his family would drink tea and play chess.  Wouldn't you love to have a place like this just to drink tea?  

We found the cutest little boy playing hide-and-seek in the garden.

This is on the outside wall of the Forbidden City.  So GORGEOUS isn't it?

Our next stop was the Temple of Heaven.  The Emporer was the only one allowed to enter the temple.  It seems like a waste to me since he only went to the temple twice a year to pray to the gods for the change of the seasons.

One of the many corridors leading up to the temple itself.  I LOVE the detail in the ceilings and pillars.

The temple itself has no nails holding it together.  There is one giant pillar in the middle made from one tree trunk and then all the other pillars fan out from the middle.  They were so ingenious!

To cap off our FABULOUS day, we had dinner with the Marines at the US Embassy tonight!  How fun is that?  The Marines had invited the Archery team and their families (and friends who just happen to be traveling with the families) to the embassy for a BBQ.  It was so totally casual and fun!  We were supposed to meet the Archery team at the embassy - even though we had no idea where we were going!  The cab driver dropped us off at the end of a street where all the buildings had barbed wire fencing and guards at every entrance.  Talk about intimidating! There we were - two American girls who not only had no idea where we were going but couldn't communicate with any of the guards because the guards didn't speak English.  (We were only asked for our passports three times by Chinese guards.)  After a while you totally start to feel like you're being watched because there are security cameras on all the buildings.  We were never so glad to find a building flying the US flag!  Unfortunately the guard on duty there was Chinese and didn't speak English either.  How can the US Embassy not have a guard who speaks English?!  Lucky for us a Marine was just getting off duty and came out and took us to where we we needed to be.  I've never been so happy to find someone who actually speaks English!  :)

We spent our morning at the Archery Field cheering on the US team in the quarter finals today.  Three of them are moving on to the semi-finals - GO TEAM USA!!  

The afternoon we spent at the Olympic Green watching track and field events.  So there's not a whole lot to tell you about.  For today's blog I've just included a bunch of pictures from around the city and on the Green that I thought you would enjoy.  Peruse at your leisure!!!  :)  

Road signs

Cityscape from the Olympic Green

Fountains on the Olympic Green

We spent this morning at the Archery Fields with Eric for his second round of competition.  Unfortunately, he was beaten by three points to kick him out of the running.  It was a bit disappointing.   But there's always 2012 London!  

The rest of the afternoon we spent at the Olympic Green - the Water Cube more specifically.  Here you can see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube and the National Indoor Stadium in the distance, behind the fountains.  It's a HUGE area that you could spend days in.   We watched a few swimming events - one was the men's 400m medley, where a guy from China, with no arms,  swam faster than most of the other guys and won the silver medal!  It was incredible!  We also saw the women's 200m freestyle and watched the US take gold and silver!  It's pretty exciting being inside and seeing all the action.  All the cheering gets you pretty pumped up.

This was taken inside the Water Cube - it's water running down the inside of the walls.  Pretty cool stuff!

I liked this view of the Bird's Nest, just because it has pretty green stuff in front of it.  :) 

And, of course I couldn't forget to include a picture of the Olympic Ramp where I'm going to win the gold in the Wheelchair Speed Ramp!!! 

Day Three

                       Ok, since the first pictures I posted weren't so easy to see, I'll make these next ones bigger so you can see them better!  How's that?  :)  These are just pictures of some cool buildings around the city.  The Water Cube should be familiar to you.

                                                  I feel like such a fraud!  Remember my autograph signing?  Well, today a couple of girls came up and asked if they could get a picture taken with me (I'm a star! hee hee).  Pretty soon there was a crowd around us and everyone wanted to get a picture taken with me.....AAAGGHHH!  What can you do except smile and let them take a picture?  It's really embarassing.  Rachel just sits back and laughs.......We decided that if I'm going to be an athlete then I'd better have a competition - so we decided it would be Wheelchair Speed Ramp (who has the fastest time going down the ramps in a wheelchair.  Without running into anyone.)  I'll let you know how that turns out......

So now to the real athletes.....today was Eric's first day of elimination competition.  We spent the day at the Olympic Archery Field cheering him on.  Here are a few pics of him shooting.  It's really cool to watch him shoot with only one arm.  I can't even do that with two perfectly good arms!  He's trying to recruit me into taking up archery and going to the 2012 London Paralympics. (Hmmmmm.........maybe then I could give autographs legitimately.....it's a thought, isn't it?).  

Eric's competition finally came down to a tie breaker between him and a Korean guy (this guy beat him by one point in their last competition before the Paralympics).  Sweet revenge for Eric - he beat him by one point for the tie-breaker!  Which puts Eric in the next round of eliminations tomorrow and one

 step closer to a medal.   GO TEAM USA!!!!

  

Greetings from China!

    We're not in Kansas anymore Toto!  We made it through our first day in China.  After an EXCRUTIATING all night flight, we arrived at 5:30 in the morning to what looked like a beautifully serene foggy morning in Beijing, just barely making out the silhouettes of tall buildings in the distance.  It was like walking out of the airport into a misty dream.  But then we found out the misty fog was really a thick smog that rarely lets in any sunlight, no matter what time of day,  and it wasn't so dreamlike anymore.  But, besides the smog, Beijing is a beautiful city, they planted thousands of trees and flowers just for the Olympics and it's made everything so green.  

     We made our first foray into the city just after 11:00 this morning - what a riot that was!  The cab driver couldn't speak any English of course, so trying to tell him we wanted to go to the Olympic Village was a task in itself.   We were supposed to meet Rachel's husband Eric (he's my friend that is competing in the Paralympics) at a particular place in the Olympic Village, but it was gated off all the way around.  So the cab driver just dropped us off at a corner and we were going to find our way in.  As soon as we got out of the cab several Chinese people came up to me, holding out a notebook and a pen.  I was confused for a moment.  Then I realized  - they wanted my autograph!  They though I was an athlete!  

How funny is that!  I just smiled and signed their notebooks........what else could I do?   We then tried to find our way into the gated Olympic Village and discovered it's not so easy trying to fake your way in.  We found one entrance but we had to have a pass to get in so they told us to go around the corner to the next gate.  "Around the next corner" turned out to be a half hour hike around a soldier-guarded-security-camera fence until we came to the next gate, complete with gun-toting guards, with an itty-bitty sign that said "Guest passes".  Our athletes are well guarded, that's for sure!  I think Rachel was ready to shoot her husband at this point.   We spent the rest of the afternoon touring the Olympic Village with Eric introducing us to various athletes he knows from different countries.  It was way cool!   

     We tried to get over to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube about twenty minutes away but there were just too many people.  We'll have to try again another day.  

     Our trip back to the hotel was another driving adventure!  We barely made it back alive - the drivers here are CRAZY!!!!!!  Traffic itself is crazy.  When the light turns green everyone goes - cars, bicycles, and pedestrians all scramble into the intersection trying to see who can get through first.  I'm actually surprised that we didn't hit anyone - maybe just barely nicked a few.   But all in all it was a good day.  Can't wait to see what other adventures will come our way! 

Only five days left 'til we're off on our grand adventure!   But who's counting...... Packing for the trip is going to be the challenge - you take one suitcase of clothes and one empty suitcase - cuz you gotta have room for all the stuff you bring back!