Greetings everyone!

I'm going to fit in one more post before we head off to Xi'an, and hopefully I will be able to post there as well, but not telling how much free time we will have. Our train leaves at about 6:50 tonight and is an overnight train, so we should get there bright and early tomorrow morning.



So picking up where the last post left off, I slowly recovered Friday and kind of took it easy most of the day. We had our closing ceremony at 4pm, which consisted of a couple of speeches from some of the residents, as well as some comments by Dr. Wong (the lady in charge here) and Dr. Strobel, as well as two of our classmates. We received a nice packet with information about CMU.



We were given about a 30 minute break before the closing banquet. After Peter gave the opening toast, we were free to start eating. The food was much better than what we have been getting in the dorm previously, and luckily some of our classmates went out and bought some pijou (beer) before dinner. So as is the custom in China, there were many toasts to go around, resulting in mass consumption of beer.



After dinner, a small group of us decided to go to our local beer joint, the Easy Dream Bar (Laura & Caraleigh had not been there). We hung by ourselves for a while, but then decided to invite Jojo over to have a drink with us. She declined the drink but did sit and chat with us for a while. She is quite and interesting lady and speaks very good English.



Saturday morning, Laura and I decided to head to the sports park just south of the campus here to watch the track and field activities that the medical students were participating in. It was quite an elaborate event, but we were only able to see the opening ceremony.



When we got back to the dorm, we meet up with Lindsey & Caraleigh, and we all headed up to Beihai park. This turned out to be about a 4 hour ordeal. We started at the south gate and visited Tuan Cheng (the Round City) which houses Chengguang Hall and a white jade statue of Sakyamuni from Myanmar. Supposedly you can see damage to its arm from Allied forces during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, but we weren't allowed to get very close, and could not take any pictures.


View Larger Map
(The link isn't working so well... Beihai is the area just north west of the area on the map, you can drag to see it. It has a long vertical north/south lake, with a island in the south park)

Next we headed north to Jade Islet and to see the White Dagoba which is the centerpiece of the park. We had a pretty good view of Zhonghai Lake, as well as the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park. After walking around a bit more, we decided to rent an electric boat ride around Beihai Lake. Somehow we ended up with one of the slower boats and decided to head in after getting a few more pictures.





A short ferry ride took us to the North shore of the lake and on to Jiulong Bi, the Nine Dragon Screen. This is a 5m x 27m spirit wall with colored glazed tiles of, you guessed it, dragons. Right next to this was Xitian Fanjing, another temple with the past, present and future Buddhas. This one was unique in that it contains eight golden effigies on both sides including Tantric statues.



We were all starving by this time, so we decided to head to Fish Nation (seemed like the safest place close by for Laura). We had wonderful food there, and Laura had fried food for the first time in over 3 weeks! (Fish & chips, of course). The hostel that Lindsey & I are staying at was on the way here, so we were able to stop by and see the outside.



We tried unsuccessfully to find a vintage t-shirt store that is in Lonely Planet, but had an interesting trip down a hutong that is being rebuilt. We headed to a large bookstore at Xidan next, but Laura & Caraleigh decided to head back as it was getting close to time for Mass. Lindsey & I looked around for a bit, but then had to search for about 15 minutes for a cab.


(Laura got separated from us on the very crowded subway)
We got back shortly before 6pm, and around 6:30, Yang came to pick Lindsey & I up for dinner. We were supposed to go with Yang and his girlfriend, but she couldn't make is so he invited Anna to come with us. We headed north to the Olympic park area, near where Yang lives, he took us to one of his favorite local places to eat dinner. We were the only white people there, so he said that was how we could tell it would be good :) He was definitely right, it was one of the best meals we have had here so far.




(Me, Lindsey, Yang & Anna after dinner)

Next, he drove us around the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube, so we could see them lit up at night. While I wasn't able to get a good picture of the Bird's Nest, I did get to stop and take good pics of the Water Cube, lit up in an amazing blue light. We weren't able to get too close because they have very tightened security around there, but we did find an opening in the fence where they were allowing people to take pictures.





Finally, Yang took us to see the National Theater, just west of Tiananmen Square. I had seen this from a distance during the day, but it was much more amazing at night. There is a large pond surrounding the front, and the only way to get in is a walkway that goes under the water. Unfortunately we could not go in because it was too late.



I have been taking it easy today, packing and preparing for our long train ride. We are heading off to Beijing Xi (the West train station) in about 2 hours to head out to Xi'an.

I hope everyone is doing well and hope to hear back from everyone. Thanks to everyone who is reading, and special thanks to those who are commenting.

再见,
Adam