Hǎojiǔ bùjiàn Běijīng

So...I've been meaning to at least finish up writing about our last couple vacations for the past...11 months? haha. So, here goes...Beijing!

We took a hard seat train ride overnight from Xi'an to Beijing, and said goodbye to Jenna once we got there. She joined back up with the Kaiyin group, and me, Lex, and Chris headed to our hostel. We got the best welcome to Beijing though...once we stepped out of the metro and started walking to our hostel, we saw this little boy standing on the sidewalk, walking around with this Chinese flag and waving it around. He was adorable.

Our hostel was really quaint, and we scored a private room after booking a dorm! Sweet!

We headed to the Lama temple that first day. It's one of my favourite places in Beijing. I wasn't feeling well, but we were able to take it slow for the day, only going to the Silk Market that evening before heading home, so that helped.

There's a Buddah at the lama temple that holds the Guinness World Record for being the largest statue carved out of one piece of wood. 26 metres tall.

The next day we went to the Temple of Heaven. This is a great place, and also GIGANTIC! It was an absolutely beautiful day, and we spent quite a while here before heading across the street to do some shopping at the pearl market.

We loved laying in the grass! 

This man was so good at waving this thing around in beautiful circles and intricate loops.

I wasn't so good at it...

But I was better than Chris, haha. She really struggled.

After finishing waving our kite things around, I hid from Chris and Lex, this man, seeing me, and seeing my friends looking for me, started laughing at me...ruining my hiding place, haha. He was adorable though, and only had like 3 teeth.

We had a little photo shoot in the park too. It is such a beautiful park!

We also saw this man at the Temple of Heaven...not only was he attractive, but he was with these 3 kids who were totally in love with him. Soooo cute.

The next day we headed to the Olympic Plaza.

After the Olympic Plaza, we headed to the Summer Palace. I had never been here in my other 2 trips to Beijing, and while I'm glad I finally went, I don't know if I'd go again...I like other places in Beijing better...plus it was May 1st, a holiday in China, so it was PACKED with people

We did get to witness a performance by this man...I don't even know...

That night we wanted to find some funky food to eat, so our hostel told us the place to eat scorpions (WangFuJing), and we headed out!

The scorpions were actually still moving around while stuck on these sticks. They didn't die until they were fried for us to eat.

We ended up buying dog, snake, and scorpion to eat. The dog was alright, the meat was pretty soft, but the taste was ok. The snake was actually pretty good, tougher meat though. And the scorpion was...crunchy. And oily. And terrifying, haha.

The Great Wall was our adventure for the next day. We booked a tour through our hostel to a private section of the wall called HuangHua. We were a small group, it was the 3 of us girls, then 2 guys and 1 girl from France, plus our tour guide. It was a wonderful part of the wall., and I think we only saw like 5 other people there the entire day! You don't get that kind of experience, being alone on the wall, when you go to the more touristy parts of the wall.
The first hour or so we spent on a restored part of the wall, and then the next 3 hours or so were on an unrestored section. We stopped for lunch at one point and our tour guide set out our little picnic. We had these sandwich things with donkey meat, and cucumbers and chips as well. It was pretty good actually, I thought the donkey meat kinda tasted like roast beef. Our tour guide was an interesting guy. He actually owned the hostel. He told us he had had a business partner, but she went back to Sweden after getting knocked up by a kung fu monk....yah...then he said it was weirder than it sounded...don't really know how that's possible...

The next day we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Jenna came with us, since her group had gone there while she was in Xi'an with us. 

It's lucky to rub the knobs on the doors...I lied and told Alexa and Jenna that the higher ones gave more luck, so they started making a human pyramid to rub as high as possible, hahaha.

We found a patch of wet cement and left our mark in the Forbidden City.

After the Forbidden City we met up with some of Jenna's group at a cute market area.

I also got to visit Zo during the week too! Our hostel was just down the street from his shop. I love that he still recognized me. We also met his wife, who was pregnant at the time.

I had a great time in Beijing! It was nice to be able to walk down the street without sweating because of the crazy humidity that we have in Zhongshan. We were on the same train as most of the other Zhongshan teachers, there were a few who had gone to Xi'an for the last few days of the vacation, but it was a painless 22 hour train ride home.