Temples, Temples, Temples, plus market extravaganza

Our first three days in China have been quite exciting with many sites seen including Tian'amen square, Mao Mausoleum, Forbiddnen City, Beihai Park, Confusious Temple, Lama Temple, Daton Park, the Olympic Park, the Temple of Heaven and then the Silk and Pearl Market. Our days have been jam packed and our feet our already feeling the many amount of kilometers we have been walking. But each day has been uber exciting!! We are definetly enjoying ourselves. Our first day we did Tian'amen square, Mao Mausoleum, Forbidden City and the Beihai Park. This week is National Holiday so every section of Beijing is PACKED FULL of people. It is CRAZY!! (I almost died on the subway being squished in the door becuase people were coming in and on every which way). The forbidden city is amazing however. It covers blocks and so many different kinds of temples. The emaculate detail on every corner of each temple and on the ceiling is just amazing. And this for each temple were there are almost hundereds of them. The engraved stone on each stair way is also amazing, again with the detail! The next day Curtis and I managed to take the subway to the Confusious and Lama Temple and then to the Olympic Park. The Lama Temple had the largest Budda (it is even in the guiness book of world records) it was 26 meters high and all made out of one peice of sandalwood tree, also surrouned by its own temple. Along with the huge Buddha there were numerous other temples each with 3 large gold Buddhas all with people praying and laying incense to each Buddha. The entire block surrounding the temple smelled of incense. Each budda enclosed by its own temple. (Hence the title of our blog today) The Olympic park was also very cool. It was huge! The birds nest was really neat to see. T.V. does not do justice to how cool the building is. There is even mini bird nest lamps all the way around it. The bubble cube is also very cool but we saw it during the day so the different colour lights were not on yet. The plaza between the two building is absolutely massive, stretching for what seemed to be kilometers, no joke (also packed full of people). Today started with, you guessed it, the Temple of Heaven which was farily cool, also packed full of Chinese people, not from Beijing. There were a few temples that you could go up to but not in to, just like those at Forbidden City. People pushing and shoving just to get a peak at sacred praying locations. Best of all was the hacky sack session I (Curtis) had with two very tiny old Chinese women who were already hacking with some homemade contraption made of washers and feathers in the Temple park. We have a short video to show how insanely awesome this one women was. All the boys will have to agree after they see the video. She showed me up. (But I didn't have my good hack shoes!) It was cool beacuse when I joined her after watching for a minute a fairly large crowd developed to watch the giant foreigner hack it up with the little 60+ yr women. After the temple we went to the Pearl Market. I (Monica) should stop being surprised by the vastness of Beijing, every where we go the area is HUGE. Again we enter the Pearl Market and there are 5 floors of everything you can imagen being sold with none stop people yelling at you "Cheap price for you Canadian friend" (as they see our flag on our bag). It was crazy. Someone who came up with the saying "shop tell you drop" defeinetly went to Beijing. Curtis and I sharpened up our barganing skills and like to believe we got good deals. It was neat to see all sorts of name brand articles for sale going from electronics, clothes, watches, belts, bags, jewlery, nicknacks and anything else you could imagine. After we bought way to much we went to another market, the silk market. With this one being just as crazy. It was lots and lots of fun though barganing our way through different items. Curtis charmed his way to good deals. After we were exhausted and pushed our way back into packed full subways and went to our hostel. We are anxiously awaiting what Beijing has in store for us tommorrow. On Friday we go to the GREAT WALL!!!! Which we are very excited for.
We hope everyone is doing well at home, thanks for all your comments they are fun to read, we hope there are more to come. We hope there is snow on the way for you guys. hehe
Zwei-Juan (bye)

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