Fulton Hotel Beijing

... day in instructed in English and one half day instructed in Chinese. All students learn both languages. There are approximately 16 students in each classroom with two teachers, the teacher of English and the teacher of Chinese. The English portion of the day includes RELA, Everyday Math, Science, and Art. During the Chinese half of the day, students have Mandarin Language Arts, Global Studies, Physical Education, and Music. At the nursery level, the student:teacher ...

... person I found myself in the midst of a bit of a predicament: whether to take my beloved childhood teddy bear on the Great Wall or to use the space for extra warm, clean, clothes and/or water….

I chose the bear, judge me if you wish. But let me just add, best decision ever. I may not have been the cleanest kid in the country-side, but I made it through the most perilous sleep with the comfort of that bear.

So we set out, a little later than planned, the guys a ...

... which was extremely hazy today because of the weather and pollution. There are many different temples filled with Buddhas and many Chinese buy incense, which they light on fire outside (adding to the haze) or place in a dish inside. (We saw someone taking the unlit sticks from the dishes and boxing them, probably for resale.) My favorite was the biggest, and 85-foot Buddha carved from a single block of sandalwood. I got in trouble for photographing it, oops.

After ...

... EVERYTHING we ordered had the spicy chili paste oil in it. We had spinach leaves in chili, lamb baked in the chili, and prawns in garlic chili oil. It was a little spicy...Ernie love it. He ate most of the lamb (lamb being his favorite) and the spinach. It was funny. Street food--We didn't try the sticks of strange meat as it was really cold outside (although we have pictures of scorpions, sea horses, and other unidentifiable creatures on sticks), but we managed to ...

... next to a few Canadians during the game and discussed the up-coming Vancouver Winter Olympics, the locals are excited. Sold them our Softball gold medal tickets, the softball game is the same time as the Waterpolo gold medal game. We decided to attend waterpolo, USA is in the final. Turned out that both the USA women's softball and waterpolo teams took silver...oops, gold was expected. Saw a guy at the baseball game with a USA Waterpolo shirt ...

... I head out in search of one, even as I am thinking that I should be looking for the "Everything's a Yuan" store as my friend Linda joked. I run into Leo and ask him the best places to find a silk kimono, and he tells me to wait, we are going to the Silk Market next. Okay, then that wraps it up for me. I join up with some others as we all scoot through the raindrops that have begun to fall and dash back onto the bus. It's ...

... they didn't know where the place was either, but the lovely receptionist rang the hostel for us and someone came and met us. Basically, you're not meant to find the hostel with these directions, its impossible. You have to ring them and they will meet you somewhere, but the hostel don't tell you this until you ring them in distress wondering where the hell they are. As the hostel is in an old part of the city in a "Hutong", its all alleyways, so I'd ...

... have we robbed a bank prior to travel and stuffed the money in our suitcase?). These forms will obviously need to be handed in at some point and an endless series of questions asked to corroborate our answers on the forms. Once inside the terminal, my first impression is of how quiet it is. And by quiet, I mean silent. Iamgine Heathrow but with no one around. Beijing is quieter than that. On our journey to baggage reclaim, we hand the first of our forms over ...

... in the search for the travelers agency's address, which I had downloaded from the Web, just to find out that they only accept traveler's checks in Renmimbi! On the other hand, I found out that any bank will accept my dollars travelers' checks, without any extra charges. So, after waiting about 30 minutes in a Bank of China, I get enough Yuans to last about 2 weeks. My friend's friends then took us to the "chic" shopping area of Beijing to wait until the night fall ...

... but it originated in the Hunan province in the 18th century, and quickly became popular with the aristocracy of the time. The plays are very simple: four actors at most, who all sing and talk in falsetto, and a small, equally shrill orchestra. They tell some popular historical stories or Buddhist tales, and there's a bit of slapstick comedy mixed in too. We were presented with three small plays. My favourite one was about the Monkey king ...