Beijing

Beijing just flew on by. Time is so relative. The night train was a blast! While it was fun after 14 hours we were all really to move one to something else. That something else was to do something that I have always wanted to do! We went to the Great Wall of China. I think everyone wants to see the great wall during their life time. It was something I know that I always wanted to do. It is absolutely phenomenal. Pictures do not give the wall justice. Beijing is a very heavily polluted city. When we got there it was really smoggy. To be honest it was more of what I expected there and in Shanghai but up until that point we had been blessed with good weather. As we were driving up the mountains to get to the great wall it was still super smoggy. We were all a little sad because it made seeing the wall a little more difficult. To complicate the situation my stomach was going me problems. We got there and there are two ways up the wall. We decided to do the steeper but less traveled side. It was incredible. I cannot image building the wall on top of mountains. I had a hard enough time getting up the wall. It really goes on for as far as the eye can see. While we were up there the wind really picked up which pushed all the smog clear out. It was so pretty. It just keeps going and going and going. After basically running up both sides of the wall we went back to the hotel. We decided to go to the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. It was really fun to go and see the Olympic sites all lit up at night. It really brought back the memories of watching the Olympics on TV.

Sunday we woke up and went to church here in Beijing. It was really nice. Church is the same no matter where you are in the world. It is amazing. Sunday was a busy day after church. We went to the Forbidden City. I never realized how large it is. It really can be a city within its self. It is huge. Across the street from the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square. That was cool to go there. There isn’t much to see but it is just one of those things that you have to do. We then continued the sightseeing by going to the Temple of Heaven. It was really cool. It is fun to go to all these places that you see on the tourist guides, in history books, and on the internet. That night we found some Chinese place to eat that had some delicious banana fritters.
Monday was one of those long and tiring days. We got up early and had class :- { We then went on a subway adventure to our first business visit at Caterpillar. It is really hard to get somewhere in a taxi if you are given the wrong map and address. After being late we finally found Caterpillar. Once we were done there we made the two plus hour trek across town to the Cummins Emissions Solutions plant. We were only an hour late. They build diesel catalytic converters. This is no sweat shop . It is almost a completely automated plant. It only requires ten people to run. Monday night we hit some markets and then went to a super cool weird food market. Amazing. There were so many things that really didn’t deserve to be a on a stick. Thankfully I am too big of a wuss to eat some of those things.

Tuesday is just a fun willed day of flights to Tokyo. You would think that going from Beijing to Tokyo would be fairly quick. It should be however, BYU is silly and booked our flights with a layover in Hong Kong to add about five hours to travel time. Once we got to the Beijing Airport we also found that our Honk Kong Tokyo flight was canceled. Oh the adventures of traveling. It is crazy I am less than a week from being home.