China Day 2!

oh man. we started this glorious -5 degree (Celsius) day with a stop at an awesome jade workshop where we got to watch the artists carve jade and make beautiful sculptures. we looked around, got some cool stuff- then back on the bus to the great wall!! we went to the balaling pass (or something of the sort.. our tour guide david has great english but sometimes i literally have no clue what he's talking about) and started our climb! katherine and i went up SOOO high it was awesome! my adrenaline was pumping and my face was freeeezing (mom- i wish you had been there to put vaseline on my face like the old days haha) its over 2000 years old and over 4000 miles long- awesome. it was amazing and the entire time i kept having to remind myself it was real. i literally was like THIS IS SO COOL every 2 seconds. then we headed to the da ling friendship store where there was a cool clossinais store? its this cool art form where something is carved out of bronze and then enamel is used to fill in the spaces- so pretty, very classic chinese like the bangles and vases you see often- best part of that store was that i saw ADAM LAUFMAN! we knew we were both in beijing but he happened to be at the same place for lunch as we were with his group too! i walked in to get a seat and i hear "Avra" from across the room. it was great!!!!! small world. always. 

After all of that excitement we went to the olympic area. we got to go inside the birds nest- SO awesome- not as large as i thought but totally cool- and to the water cube (as close to michael phelps as any of us will probably ever get..) which was so interesting. the architecture was surreal and although all of us were freeeeezing it was worth it. then we went to dinner at this nice restaurant- as much as i love chinese food its getting rather old just because its so greasy and a lot of the flavors are so similar - good thing i eat everything. after dinner some of us went to a kungfu show aka gymnastics plus martial arts plus bad acting on steroids. we laughed a lot so that was nice. now, just back at our nice hotel :) tomorrow we are going to a local university, the big market here and then hoping on a plane to Xian for two days. see you there! (i hope the internet will be as good/accessible there as it was here.. we'll see! ) miss you all- wish you could see this!