As my second week in Beijing draws to a close, I have had another week of wonderful experiences. The week was pretty standard with work, but the weekend was full of more fun. Saturday began with me, a couple of the guys from work, and two girls that they know heading up to the Great Wall at Baldaling. We met at my hotel, grabbed a taxi to the bus station, and then took a city bus to the Great Wall. That was quite an experience with all of those people crammed onto one bus. Some later asked me how many Chinese people you can fit on one bus, to which I didn’t know the answer. His response was “one more” 🙂 So we arrived at the Great Wall where it was freezing cold and had snow on the ground. We climbed along the wall where the view was breath taking (or maybe that was the fact that I was worn from all of the climbing). I have been told that only 10% of the pictures of the Great Wall have snow. I’m not sure if that is because of the number of people that are there during the summer or there isn’t much snow there. After we were done climbing, we had lunch and then grabbed another bus back to Beijing, where I grabbed a quick nap on the bus. We then had another lunch 🙂 We then parted ways and I came back to the hotel. After this I met up with Mark for a late dinner and then to a bar for a drink. Mark showed me more of the Embassy area of the city. I then came back and experienced the New Year (I’ve written about this in another entry).
Sunday I spent bumming around the hotel to relax a bit before one of my coworkers came to pick me up to go to her house to celebrate the New Year with her family. It was a wonderful time. We had wonderful conversation and even better food. I was extremely happy and appreciative to have been invited to their place to spend the evening with them. We set off fireworks in a little area outside the apartments. There were a number of people setting off fireworks and it was a great time.
I have spent this morning booking travel for the rest of the week. I’ll be traveling to Xi’an and Shanghai to visit those places. I’ll be back during the weekend to see a few more things in Beijing and watch the Steelers in the Superbowl! I’m really looking forward to that! 🙂