A Day Off:)

FINALLY, a day off from the crazy program. It was amazing. We loaded onto our two Peking University tour buses at 7:30am and took off for a 2ish hour drive to the Great Wall (see Martin's post yesterday). I don't have words for it other than incredible. Our legs are dead. It was a pretty intense climb, but we took our time and took many breaks to take pictures and just enjoy the scenery around us. We had some blue sky, definitely rare through all the pollution, so that was nice. We got there around 9, hiked around until 11 and then took the 'toboggan-sled' type thing down the Great Wall- more than worth the extra yuan we had to shell out! It made me wish Neal and Anna were with us to join in on our Disneyland-like screams as we sledded down the metal track to the bottom.

The program had arranged for us to have a pre-paid meal at one of the restaurants there, which was really nice and much needed after all that physical exertion! Martin tried his hand at bargaining and bought us a keychain as a souvenir from one of the many, many vendors yelling "Hello! You buy T-shirt, 1 dollar!" :)

We got back on the bus around 1 and got dropped off again at the Summer Palace, where we walked around in the heat with Cali and Jim, another couple we've met here and took lots of pictures. We braved our first Beijing taxi ride for the first time also- man drivers are crazy here! But hey, it works for them.

After having about an hour and a half to relax and shower in our rooms, we met back up with Jim and Cali to try out a vegetarian restaurant next to our hotel in some random alley. We'd heard about it from some program participants that accidentally went to it and were disappointed- as soon as we heard it, we said "Vegetarian restaurant? WHERE?!" We wandered down an alley with Cali's Chinese-English Dictionary, trying to match the characters to Vegetarian to characters that appeared outside the multiple restaurants. 4 people at one restaurant were watching us and sent another waitress out who eagerly said "Vegetarian?" Woohoo, we found the right place! We were given a special little private room and the one waitress who spoke a little English helped us order. We ended up with fried rice, a spicy tofu dish, a basic veggie dish and this delicious potato dish that sort of tasted like Indian food. We'd been trying to find the Chinese word for broccoli so that we could order it, but ended up giving up and asking her to bring us her favorite dish- which, lo and behold, had broccoli and snowpeas. Delish! It was by far the tastiest food we've had here, and a wonderful dining experience. It was on the pricier side (still only about 6 US dollars per person for the whole meal) but well worth the cost. We also got to know Jim and Cali a little better and feel that we made some new friends, which is always great.

We'll post pictures soon of the Great Wall and the Summer Palace- for now, we must study for our 3rd Chinese Quiz that we have in the morning and I have to lesson plan- my first evaluation is tomorrow, ahh! Wish me luck! :)

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