sunday

from mom:

Hi Meghan, We need to hear and see an update. The food pictures made me hungry for more! Pardon the pun. Mom

well, now i know where i get the horrible joke genes from. okay, so i already knew i got a good portion from dad, but now i know that i really had no genetic chance of being not punny.

sunday was an interesting day, more interesting than it will seem to you, because most of the experience can't be written about/recorded digitally. this day we went to the beijing sports university and met and then spent the day with students from there. here's a statue of mao on the campus. the campus was very pretty and very green.
we ate lunch with the students and then brought them to the summer palace. the summer palace is notorious in china as a product of imperial excess. it is associated with the empress cixi. i can't remember if she was in charge of its creation, but if she wasn't, then she expanded it at great cost. the story is that the money spent on the summer garden came from the military fund, so when japan and china fought at the turn of the century, china's navy only had one shell to fire on the japanese fleet. the summer palace is more than just one palace; it's a gigantic green space in the northwest of beijing. a large lake was dug, and the dirt from the lake was used to build a hill that overlooks the city.

here's a weird creature that you can find guarding entrances all over beijing, along with more generic lions. i haven't yet been able to figure out which animal parts mean what, but overall, the creature is used for protection. the green fabric in the background is surrounding a building at the summer palace. a lot of the tourist destinations are currently being restored so they'll be ready for the olympics next year.

this is the long walkway that winds along the shore of the lake.

this is the main tower on the hill that overlooks the city.

to get up there, you needed to climb lots of stairs.
and lots more stairs.

but the view was pretty awesome. these were some buildings just off to the east.

this is the view just to the west. that tall thing is a tibetan monk temple or something.

the view south. the entire lake and a lot more are all part of the summer palace. it's the largest imperial garden in the world.
this statue was in the tower near the top of the hill

the exterior of the tower. we could have gone higher, but we didn't.

the view south again.

here's a pic of me and my classmate kysa with the two beijing sports university students i spent the most time with. we're wearing hats we borrowed from a souvenir shop. i don't think the workers in the shop were happy that we played with their hats and then didn't buy anything.

anyway, the students both have chosen english names for themselves in their classes. the one on the left calls herself shirley, and the one on the right calls herself blue. they're both english majors. shirley plans to be an english teacher like her mom. she might also study journalism. blue wants to switch majors to economics, since she sees knowing english as more of a skill, not something to base one's career off of. they only have two weeks off this summer since they're going through training to be volunteers at the olympics. they were both so hospitable and friendly, and it was sad to say goodbye to them. if my experience with them is any indication, they'll represent beijingers as warm, friendly, and helpful hosts at the olympics.
here's another view of the lake, the mountains to the northwest, and the hill we climbed at the north.

bridge to the island in the lake

view from the island of the structure we climbed.

so yeah, sunday was really great. it was wonderful to connect and talk with the beijing university students. they told me a lot about china, and i told them about the us. we exchanged email addresses, so i can keep up with them. it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far.

btw - i made a google map of some of the places i've mentioned on this blog.