Weekend Excursions

Uploaded all photos up to yesterday's adventures. But time spent on these trips == less time for blogging, so here are some teasers, and please go to the link for all the photos -- un-selected and un-captioned. =P

First week

Second week

Visited the Tian'an Men (天安门) Square last week. We actually wanted to go to the Forbidden City (故宫) first, but we sort of lost our way around the Square =D so we thought might as well finish touring the Square first. Then our cameras ran out of battery and mine ran out of storage space on top of that.. so we decided to leave the Forbidden City till next time.



Before going up to the main building, we found a garden at the side. It turned out to be the Sun Yat-Sen Park (中山公园). I'm glad we made the detour, because the park was full of very interesting trees, and I should say I enjoyed this part more than the actual Tian'an Men. =P




Third week

Great Wall! =) Angie happened to be in town, so we went together.. or more exactly, I hopped into their rented car. =D We took the easier path, Badaling Great Wall (八达岭长城) where we took the cable car up to Haohan Po (好汉坡), hiked for a bit, played Spiderman as Ben put it.. then took the cable car back down.



In the afternoon we continued our journey to (a small part of) Summer Palace (颐和园). The place is huge!

Explanation courtesy of Peter: the number of animals carved at the end of the roof signifies the rank of the resident in the imperial household. Interesting!

After the sightseeing business, we met up with Rong Hui and Wei Lie, BF members who are studying in Beijing University.



The university itself is almost a tourist attraction, it has such wonderful sceneries and you can find souvenir sellers at the side of the road. Here is the library, one of the three major places as I was told. The other two are the lake and the pagoda.



I got treated to a mini tour, then a nice dinner with Rong Hui and Mei Ying, another BF member. It was the closest to home dishes I've had since coming here. =D

I peeked into their dorm rooms, or slums by their terms... and for a good reason, poor thing. =P Made me quite thankful for my small hotel room. Got many a tip and language crash course from them too. =)

Seems like I talked quite a lot after all.. Next weekend I'll be on the trip to the Redmond campus for a 5-day visit, so the next post will be much delayed, especially since we have homework before, during and after the visit. =P It's hard work to be lucky!