day 3

June 29-Friday
   This morning we started off the 

day at tiannamin square.

 For a while it was raining but the 

sky cleared up a little 

bit. It felt like we were in Seattle.

 Our guide yoko was 

giving us a bunch of history of the 

square and the buildings

 but, as we all suspected, she said 

nothing about the famous

 protest that happened there.  After

 the square a few of us

 headed to a public restroom. Thank

 goodness mrs. Ressa had

 toilet paper! They weren't as bad 

as I thought they'd be though.
 Alright, there were not words to 

describe the beauty of the

 forbidden city! Walking through the

 city filled me with awe.

 The only down side was the sheer amount of people. When I

went up to see the emperors throne I had to hold Emily's arm

 not to lose and had to literally shove my way to the front....

and the room was dark. :( the garden was the most beautiful 

part. Apparently this is where the concubines would hang out.

 I kept imagining the ancient people living their daily lives.

 I wish I could have.
After the forbidden city I was starving. Too bad I decided 

in the morning to not get lunch. So seven of 

us left the restaurant and walked down the

street. Our goal: McDonald's or Starbucks. 

We made it to a little hole-in-the-wall shop 

where I found lays. I grabbed at the blue 

bag thinking the were salt and vinegar....

they ended up being Italian red meat

 flavor. At least they were lays. On the 

way back we stopped at another shop and 

found mountain dew and ice cream! I was 

so happy. We were sad to find though that 

the place where 

everyone ate was the best place so far.

After lunch we went to the lama 

Buddhists temple. I was really 

surprised to see so many Chinese 

actually follow Buddhist ways.

 There was a ton of incense. We 

couldn't talk pictures inside 

the rooms unfortunately. But it 

was very pretty. 
The roads around the buddhist temple were filled with little

 shops. I found the scarves that my teacher has! SOO happy. 

And they were cheap. I also found mini guardian lions, and a fan. 
When we finished shopping we headed to take a rickshaw tour

 through the hutong to visit the families there. Unfortunately 

the rickshaws didn't go very quickly and we were bombarded by 

street venders. A lady kept shoving fans in my face and Emily's 

face. Finally I bought one fan just to get her away. The

 tourtook us right through the heart of the Chinese 

"ghetto." Not really but the people were definitely 

poorer than the people in the city. We had dinner at a 

hutong family's home. I was alittle nervous at first but

 the food we had was better thanalmost everything we've 

had so far. The man and woman who cooked for us were both

 chefs. One of the dishes was this veggitarian sort of
 meatball that the man's grandfather invented.Apparently,

 the grandfather cooked it for the last emperor! Very cool.
We went for our nightly,walk tonight and found a night market.

 Some kids ate scorpion. It was disgusting. Afterwards

 Jill, taryn, tessa and I had some good ol 

fashion girl talk. Felt good.