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Published: December 7th 2004
The Great Wall
I will agree with Richard Nixon. When he visited the Great Wall of China, he said, "It sure is a great wall."Hello friends and family! Well, once again I have traveled outside the “Land of the Rising Sun” to explore a little more of Asia. Last month, I spent a week or so in China. I was mostly in Beijing, but I did travel outside of the city a bit to check out some stuff nearby. Beijing is an awesome city. It has tons of culture, shopping, and good food. It is really clean and beautiful and very quaint. It’s a great place for the upcoming 2008 summer Olympics.
So we checked out the big touristy stuff…Forbidden Palace, Tiananmen Square, Great Wall of China, Mao Zedong Mausoleum, saw an acrobatic show, ate some duck, etc…
It was all really cool, but you don’t want to read about that so I’ll jut post pictures and tell you about a few other interesting things that happened while we were there…or just my observations.
-People in China can speak English a whole lot better than the Japanese.
-People in China spit a lot.
-We had heard to be prepared for rudeness, especially coming from Japan, but it wasn’t all that bad. Most everyone was really friendly. I just think the Chinese language sounds like yelling
Another view
This part of the Great Wall was steep. My calf muscles really ached the next day. and it makes it seem like they are always angry. Like once on the bus on the way to the Great Wall, the tour guide was talking to us and she seemed really mad…and her voice was loud and angry sounding. But I asked Yang, a friend I had met that day, what she was saying and he said, “Oh, she is just asking if you would like to buy a bottle of water for the bus ride.” Haha.
-Mao Zedong is very respected in China. His face is everywhere and you can even go and see his body. So Dave and I were going to check that out and suddenly, 3 military men came toward us to try and stop us saying, “bag, bag!” They were saying that no bags were allowed past that point, but Dave didn’t understand them so he starts to freak out and run through the line, clutching his bag to him. That was not a good idea. 3 more men (with huge guns) came to help restrain this insane foreigner who was screaming, “NO! NO!” And fighting them with all he had. You can imagine that this caused a scene, as it was in
the busiest place in the city in the middle of the day. I didn’t understand what they were doing at first either, but when I realized what was going on, I screamed, “Dave! You can’t take your bags in!” At this point he was on the ground thinking he was about to be murdered. Well finally they let him up and he went and checked his bag. When he came back though, the men were glaring at him and they said “no bag!” Dave thought that they were incorrectly saying “bag” so the English teacher in him felt it was necessary to correct their pronunciation. Talk about embarrassment.
Well, that’s all from me now. I can’t wait to see everyone in just a week or so. I’ll be home for Christmas! Yea!
Love,
April
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