China!

After an uneventful flight we arrived in Beijing on Sunday evening and had dinner at Mitch and Li Na's apartment. They live in the University district which is a really cute neighborhood, and the weather was nice but a bit humid by San Francisco standards (Mitch had told us it was not humid at all, but we found out that was by midwest standards). Anyway, Li Na made a delicious dish of stewed chicken with potatoes and homemade flat bread named laobing. It was yummy! Afterwords we walked around the neighborhood and looked at the night market where the vendors sell fruit and vegetables. Since Mitch was still jetlagged as well we all headed to bed at 8pm.



We woke up super early the next morning and went out for street food breakfast. It was AMAZING. We had fried dough "donuts" without sugar, soup and some pork steamed buns named baozi.



Then we went to the Chinese hospital attached to the university so Mitch could get his bandages changed. Bandages you say? Yep, poor Mitch tripped and put his hand through two, TWO glass windows the day before we arrived. So his right hand needed a bunch of stitches and he has a splint for the tendon in his thumb, and is all covered in bandages for the next 2 weeks or so.



After breakfast Mitch took us to an underpass near his place where senior citizens dance every morning for exercise. It was quite a production with live music and props, and got some fun video and photos of it. It was just ridiculously happy and we all walked away with big smiles.



We then took a bus to the Badaling section of the Great Wall. We got there around 11:30 and the sun was scorching. It was also a bit further away from the ever present pollution in Beijing that looks like fog, so that made the sun feel stronger also. We walked up quiet a few stairs and got a terrific view of the wall. In the photo of the 2 of us you can see an enormous sign on the hillside celebrating the 2008 Olympics. We found it a bit cheesy and would have preferred a photo without it, but they put it in the most scenic spot so that it would be in all of the photos. As Mitch said "Hey, this is the REAL China- it's good to have it in the photo!" hmmmm. He might be right. Anyways, it was a fun day and we had a great time.



After a late lunch of noodle soup we went back to the apartment to cool off and wait for Li Na to get home from work.



For dinner, we had beef filled "pie" from a really nice woman that runs a shop that Mitch and Li Na have been going to forever. The woman was so sweet, she even brought us several free soups to try. For a perfect ending to a great day, we walked around outside near the canals and watched people sing karaoke from portable TV/Audio set ups that some enterprising people run on the sidewalk. It was dark so unfortunately we didn't get any photos of that. You will need to use your imagination for that one.

We got a good nights sleep and we are off to see Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City today. Plus, it's supposed to thunderstorm, so things might get interesting today.....
Thanks to Lisa and Marc for posting this, since China has blogspot blocked ;)

[note from Lisa: appologies for the formatting not being as nice as usual, I've never used Blogger before!]