Shengjude Hotel Beijing

Hello from Mutianyu China! As I wrote in my first entry, I have been here for four month as a part of my internship, and it has been great. About ten days ago, one of my best friends came here and we had the greatest time! The Wednesday she came here was horribly hot, but still we rent bikes from our hostel right after I picked her up from Beiji...

Heute war es dann also soweit, es ging auf zur letzten Etappe Richtung Peking. Da aus Pingyao keine direkten Busse fahren und d** Bummelzug von hi** 12 Stunden braucht, mussten wir **stmal einen Bus nach Taiyuan nehmen um da dann in den "Bullettrain", einen Expresszug zu steigen. Erstmal haben wir uns dann ein letztes Mal mit den schw**en Tasche...

In our third day in Asia we travel from Seoul to Beijing, this time on Korean Air flight 851. We left Seoul at 9:00 a.m and at 10:00 we were in Beijing.

This was my third in the Chinese Capital, and the changes were really notorious, the recent Summer Olympic Games of 2008 did really left a stamp on the city, now the Metro System connecte...

y we started our morning by visiting a Jade factory in Beijing. We learned all about the process of carving Jade, which by the way was incredible, the detail that goes into each carved piece, and also learned about how jade is chosen, what makes it unique and tips on buying jade. After getting our tour through the factory, we were able to shop f...

Aunt Shen's son, Tao, and his family (wife Ou and son Luyi) flew to Beijing midnight last night. They took their vacation leaves to watch a few games for which they had already gotten tickets. In the morning, Joseph's former babysitter, Shifeng, called to visit us. I had been trying to find her contact info even before I left the US. She watched...

Making up for lost time on the blogging front. When you pay 18 RMB for coffee in order to use the free wi-fi, you want to make the most of it! Many other things are going on besides teaching although teaching has definitely taken up a large chunk of my time and energy. Adam and I moved from the apartment with no electricity to another place. The...

Day 24 - China Art Gallery We visited the art gallery today with one of Lea's friends; there was an exhibition of the Dunhuang Buddhist cave art on. The outside of the gallery was made to look like the cliffs at Dunhuang, and they even replicated some of the caves in the rooms inside. The art was pretty interesting, but I think I'd like to see t...

Today we visited the Great Wall. It was - literally - breathtakingly spectacular. And yes, despite my feelings that the cable car would take a little something away from the hike, we ALL took the cable car up, because to hike from the parking lot up to the wall takes an hour. And I'm not that fast of a hiker, either. We went to an area called Mu...

23-5 People to people Deze week mogen Rob en ik mee met een delegatie uit Amerika die deel uitmaakt van het People To People programma. Om jullie geheugen nog maar eens op te frissen. Dit programma is in 1956 opgezet door voormalig VS president Eisenhower en wordt nog steeds geleid door de kleindochter van de beste man. People to people heeft ve...

I'm not even going to try to explain where Pingyao is because my geography sucks as we well know. I thought flew over Bolivia on the way home from Ibiza and went to Greece when it was Cyprus! I think Pingyao is heading towards the central part of China, it's between Beijing and Xi'an, and is an intact and original walled city from the Ming Dynas...