The Orient

Sorry, I'm still posting these pictures from they mysterious Orient... These are some photos of classic China...

The GREAT WALL. I wanted to let my runner girls know that I did indeed take the oportunity to sing "Be A Man" (from mullan) as I was wondering across the great wall. (I'm pretty sure we sang it better than donny osmond, given the circumstances.)

One of the buildings at "The Temple of Heaven"

We had a couple of tours, one night we went to an awesome acrobatics show and then went to a traditional chineese dinner, where we were served the famous "Peking Duck" this was our duck chef. (I hate to say it, but panda express has more enjoyable chineese)
Temple of Heaven

Traditional Dinner, Russ, Cindy, Mom, Tracy, Amy, Me...

Everyone rides around these bikes with their stuff in the cart behind. The roads were Crazy there! Way busy and Crazy Crazy drivers. Really no rules of the road, just finagle your way through traffic, right of way goes to the bigger object (bus vs. taxi, person vs. taxi etc.)

The Asians LOVED tracy. They were constantly asking her to be in photos. She even had a 30(ish) yr. old chubby asian man try to kiss her after he got the photo with her... well, he did kiss her, she was trying to turn her head and get away, but he still got her on the edge of her lips. It was probabally the funniest thing that happened the whole trip!

Fountains at the Summer Palace, they shot water out of their mouth into the mote below.

These dragons and other mystical animals were on the roof tops of important chineese structures (palaces and temples.) These are on a temple in the "Forbidden City" The more animals, more important the building. I think the max amount of amimals is 12.

Statue in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was an olden time city, fully enclosed by a 50 or so foot wall. The emporer would live inside with all the acompanying temples and luxuries. they also had the fair, or carnival inside the walls each year.

This is our crew, Including our awesome tour guide Tony (Tony spoke great english. He said he learned english from watching the T.V. show "friends") We are in the large courtyard of the forbidden city. This is where the yearly Carnival would have been held. The building behind us had the throne of the emporer.

Tony took us to a jade factory where we got the run down on this prescious stone. Before the tour none of us really cared much about jade, but after you learn all about it, and the processes that are used you really think that jade is the coolest thing. You feel like you NEED to have something made out of jade. This is what I would have choosen, if I hand the $. they were thousands of dollars.

Summer Palace.
Summer Palace

Of course we had to see the Classic Pandas of China. Very Cute.

Some delicous food the you can eat anytime when in the orient.