I survived China

We made it back from China without any mishaps and we had a whole bunch of great adventures. Here I am doing some heel clicks on the Great Wall. I will have to post more of the pictures later (I filled up my entire memory card!) and post a more detailed account of our fabulous trip, but for now here's a small summary.

We saw all the main sites...the Wall, the terra cotta warriors, a ton of ancient palaces and temples, the Mao masoleum, the Forbidden City, the leaning tower of China and Chinese Venice, an acrobat show, a tea ceremony, the silk/pearl market, some of the Olympic venues, the horrible pollution, people wearing those Chinese hats, people riding bicycles, people crammed into the subway (we were crammed in there too!), mostly just lots and lots of people.

We were swarmed by people everywhere we went who would either a) stare at us. or b) invade our personal space and try to sell us something. (They would say, "Hello lady. Postcard. Taxi. Umbrella. Or whatever else they were trying to sell us.) or c) attach themselves to us with a death grip. (Ok, that only happened once, but it was very traumatizing.) And we tried lots of weird food, but fortunately not any bugs on a stick.

We also rode in a rickshaw powered by a little old Chinese man. And we walked a total of about 123 miles. We also rode on a boat, a train, a subway, a taxi, a van, a bus, a motor scooter, and a bunk bed train. And we got around using a Chinese phrase book and map where we would point to the characters and hope we were going to the right places and not ordering fish heads or something gross for dinner.

It was such a fantastic trip. It was very different from what I expected it to be like, but very very cool. Here's my Picassa album of the trip if you're interested in seeing ALL the photos. Otherwise, I'll post the highlights here sometime soon. But for now, here's one of some cool pavillions. (They all had great names like "Pavillion of Blessed Shade" or "Pavillion of Harmonious Sounds".)