4th of July in China!

I realized that a lot of people were interested in my trip and were wanting to be updated on how I was doing and so I thought I would make things easy and create a blog so everyone can check out how things are going and what China is like.

So I will start from the beginning. I am in Beijing China working at an international school also known as BCIS. I am working with all sorts of different ethnicities and people from all over the world anywhere from Australia throughout Europe and Asia. They are amazing kids and their accents are absolutely adorable. I already told Tj that I was bringing one of them home with me. His name is Quinn and he is Japanese but has lived all over the world. He has a little lisp and he is extremely intelligent, as well as a great little swimmer.
I am living in an apartment and there is a total of nine of us. My friend Brady from WSU is my director and we have another guy names Gabe that rooms with him. We have two guys and seven girls and it is a blast living in a four bedroom apartment with two bathrooms (which the land lord just shut off one of our showers so that would be a total of 9 people to one shower). We have people from all over, including Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, California and Washington and we have met people from all over the states including New York and Florida.
Our work is about a 5 minute walk from our apartment if you cut through the little hole some genius Chinese person cut in the mile line fence separating the 6 lane road that we have to cross every morning. Otherwise we are forces to hike the bridge, so we choose to jump in front of buses and cabs instead =) (don't worry grandma they all will stop for us, just keep praying your rosary). We discovered a little stand on the way to work that makes a breakfast treat to die for. It is like a crape that is mixed with egg and has cilantro and onion and some funny crunchy pastry inside along with some weird sauces in it. It sounds horrible but it is actually quite amazing.
So far we have made many trips to all of the local markets utilizing the subway system the most, as it seems to be the most convenient and cheapest way to get around. There are an amazing amount of people here that no photograph could represent. It is amazing how many designer clothing and purse markets there are along with dvds that are not exactly out of the theaters yet... I bought the Elton John cd which includes 34 songs for 25 yuan which is about three dollars and I am listening to it as I write this blog. Yah it is pretty amazing. We even took a trip to the snack market and believe it or not I ate scorpion and sea horse. YUMMY!
I am sure you are all wondering about Beijing and what life is like here. We basically live right downtown, or in one of the 100 districts there are. They all kind of seem like downtown to me because there are probably a million sky scrapers in every direction you look. The pollution has its ups and downs but for the most part it is very hot, humid and over cast. It took about two weeks for us to experience a hot sunny clear day, but when we did it was amazing.
We have visited a lot of the tourist attractions and temples including Tienemian Square, the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Lama Temple and last but DEFINITELY not last, the Great Wall of China. We are working through the American Embassy here in Beijing and along with that comes our little friend Danielle. She is kind of like our personal tour guide and she has arranged most of our weekend trips to markets, the wall and the trip we are taking this weekend to a Buddhist Temple for a yoga retreat.
So back to the wall. I have never been more in awe in my life. We took a bus for a three and a half hour drive to get away from all of the touristy sites and to take a hike many foreigners do not know about. We got on the wall and each time I would walk through a divider, my jaw would drop, and when I say every time I mean it. It was so unbelievable to think that it was real and that we were actually there. Me and my friend Jacqui were kidding about it the whole way. "Oh what did you do today? Oh I just hiked the Great Wall of CHINA!!!!" It was silly but a good time. I took plenty of pictures to show for and Grandma says that Grandpa is in one of them watching over me, so that is good and probably the reason why I didn't fall off due to the lack of hand rails and safety nets. Anyways we hiked the wall for about 9 miles which was either straight up or straight down and you would think that the up hill would be the hardest... HA you would think...
When we got to the end of the hike we took a zip line down off the mountain and landed on a little boat dock, and then took a little motor boat into a beer garden and got lunch. It was absolutely amazing and breath taking!! The only thing that was annoying was the people trying to sell you things the whole 9 miles, and it was all the same; post cards, water and t shirts or a friend to walk with (which you would have to pay and that did not speak English... I can only imagine how much fun that would be). Anyways we had Danielle yell at them in Chinese and tell them to go away. We took a lunch break at the top of one of the ten mountains we climbed on the wall and took a bunch of pictures. We were finishing up with lunch and somehow an apple core was thrown off the roof top and a Chinese lady stormed up after us and was yelling at us... I think... and motioning something like a falling object hitting her on the head. haha oopsee, you can connect the dots as to where that went but I am still alive to tell about it.
Having your 21^st birthday in China really was a lot better than I expected. We celebrated for two days. The first day we went to Hooters and got pictures with the girls and they sang happy birthday to me. Then we went out to our reggae bar called the together bar and celebrated with the whole group. It was a blast and we played Nintendo Wii and had a blast with all of our foreign friends.
Today being the 4th of July, we had our camp all day and we wore American flags and red white and blue, and after work we all dressed up in our colors and went to the Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate. It was amazing, the food, the music and being out with the girls. It was a nice night out before starting our long weekend.
So this weekend we are going on a yoga retreat to a Buddhist temple. Me and 5 of my roommates are going and we will spend the night at the temple and do things like ear candling and Chinese calligraphy. Hopefully it is just as much fun as it sounds!!