The great great great big wall (with a great lot of stairs.)

Alright, time to write a new blog. Lets see, what was the last thing I wrote about...

...

Wow, that was a long time ago. (^_^;)

annnnnyway....

We had the graduation party for Dong laoshi. She was very happy and surprised. We spent a long time putting it together, and spent about 30 minutes at the bakery trying to work out with the people there what to write on the cake. (graduations aren't really a big thing here, so no one sells anything related to it really.) Apparently congratulations was too big to write, and we didn't know how to write it in chinese, and then we asked for "congrats," but apparently it was still too long, but then we pointed to another cake that had "happy birthday" written on a piece of chocolate as a decoration, and they said, oh, if we use that decoration instead of the one we usually use, it'll be fine. Then we finally got the cakes, and they both said 生日快乐。(¬_¬) Geeze people.

We've been going out to eat a lot, and we've seen some really interesting places. Most places have a decent amount of pictures on their menues, and quite a few even have english translations. Although we've run into a few questionable translations, and a lot of spelling errors. Hey, their english is obviously better than my chinese.

awesome desert they had at this one restaurant. Apparently bread is a really big desert here? But it's basically a big block of toast with ice cream and cream. As the ice cream soaks into the bread, deliciousness is made. ^-^

Then, of course, we had the Great Wall. The Great Wall of China is actually a collection of fragments of wall (which didn't really help keep invaders out, as they would just have to go around. But it makes for a beautiful view.

There are enough souvenir stores here to constitute a decent sized village.

Stairs to go up to the wall.

Hashtag Golnessa.

So many stairs.....

Later that night we went out for Korean barbecue. Beijing is kinda like Southern California in it's range of food choices. Although the majority is Chinese food, there are options for everything from Korean to Japanese to Arabic to American fast food chains.

The day after (geeze, we're so busy) we went to the Temple of Heaven, where the emperors used to go to pray to their "father" the god heaven (verses the god of earth) once or twice a year to pray for good harvest and to "reconnect." After that we also went to Tiananmen Square, the center of politics for all of China. I'll have to get to that some other time though. Busy busy busy busy. Later then!