To heaven and back

It has once again been much too long since I last updated. There are only 3 weeks until I take finals and leave Beijing - so much to do in so little time! A while back, my friends and I finally visited the Temple of Heaven, which is actually one of the closer historical monuments to our school (with the exception of the Forbidden City). Contrary to our usual luck, we actually picked a beautiful spring weekend to visit the temple and therefore felt like we were in a fairy tale as we wandered through the gardens on the way to the actual temple.


Being the tourists we are, of course we had to take the token waiguoren picture in front of the actual temple. Unfortunately we forgot to recreate our Charlie's Angels poses that we like to do in front of historical monuments.


Last week the 300 and 400 classes took a field trip to "Shijitan", which, directly translated, is the Beijing Centennial monument. This museum began construction in the year 2000 and has fake historical exhibits from all over the world. However, before we actually entered the museum, we got a special treat by the front entrance, where there was an Olympic exhibit that showed the actual torch they'll be using in the Beijing 2008 games. Soon this torch is headed for a world tour, where it will be displayed in Olympic exhibits in museums in every continent. The most exciting part - the torch's only stop in North America is nowhere else but home sweet home in San Francisco!


After the Olympic exhibit, our classes went to visit the actual museum and spent the majority of our time in the China section of the museum, since our lessons are currently focused on famous Chinese historical figures such as Confucius and Sun Yat Sen. The exhibit was pretty incredible - famous scenes and people from Chinese history were carved out onto stone walls in a huge circular room. I'm not quite sure who the stone figure in this picture is depicting, but nonetheless my fellow classmates decided to pose with him.


Outside the museum there is a huge timeline that documents the basics of all Chinese history starting from the beginning of the dynasties thousands of years ago. The timeline is designed so that when you stand at its end in the year 2000, you can see directly all the way to the Beijing railway station.


I decided to be really cool and take a picture with my zodiac sign in the year I was born. Since I was born at the end of the ox year on the Chinese lunar calendar but born in January on the western calendar, my zodiac sign was actually listed in the year 1985. As you can see, I have a wrapped up toe which I managed to stub when I tripped in the grocery store.


While on one of our dinner escapades last week, we passed by the hospital where my great grandfather used to work before the beginning of World War II. It's called Beijing Xiehe hospital and located in the Wangfujing area which is now a ritzy shopping district with lots of foreigners. Amazing that my family's history is so close to me right now!


This past weekend was CET's Great Wall camping trip! We hiked 6 miles from the Simatai to Jinshanling area of the Great Wall and camped out at night on the wall at Jinshanling. Despite my stubbed toe I actually managed to keep up!


We set up tents on the wall but many people chose just to sleep outside in sleeping bags under the stars. It was amazing to see stars for the first time in about 3 months, since Beijing is too polluted in the city to ever see stars at night.


Most people managed to get up early and watch the sunrise the next morning, but being the lazy sleeper that I am, I didn't wake up until the sun was fully up (In Phil's words, I was "burning daylight"). Anyways, I appropriately bought a shirt saying that I slept on the Great Wall, because that is indeed what I did.


This weekend I'm headed off to Xian to see the famous clay soldiers. I think we're all starting to realize that time is running short and we have to squeeze in as much as possible on the weekends (and weekdays) to make sure we get the full China experience before leaving. Should be fun!