another adventure in Beijing: pt 1

A friend of mine from Phoenix that I randomly party with or run into about once every six months, but always have a blast with, happens to be in China for a few weeks visiting his sister and brother in law, and we finally connected today after almost a week of trying to work something out. He brought me an American comfort package! Unfortunately, he had to leave the cheese in the States, or his luggage would have been overweight, but this was awesome regardless.

I went out to him and his sister in Beijing; took the bullet train (all by myself, yay!) out early this morning and met them at Tienanmen Square. Being a person that could care less about history I didn't really get into it, plus there really isn't much to see.

Across the street was the famous picture of Mao, hanging on the gate to Forbidden City. When I did Forbidden City last time in Beijing, we entered through a different gate so I missed it. I definitely expected it to be about 1,000x bigger than it actually was. Still cool; I would revisit Forbidden City over Tienanmen Square any day, but they are right across the street from each other and Tienanmen is free, so really if you're there you might as well do both.

After that, we went to lunch and then checked out one of the famous shopping streets in Beijing. As usual, there was some interesting things there...

 

I return to Beijing on Tuesday evening to spend a few days with my friend and his family. From there I will go to Busan, South Korea to visit a friend from college for a week, and from there I head back to Songyuan; my replacement teacher for TEDA has finally been hired! I'm very excited for my upcoming travel adventures... more to come :)