BEIJING!!

Soooooo... i'm finally finishing my China Posts, even though I have been home for about 2 months already....

Whatever I've been a bum!

But I'm onto Beijing and that was so much fun! Mostly because this is the first vacation where I wasn't sick and hacking my lungs up... and because Beijing is AWESOME!!

The first thing we did when we got there was go to the Olympic sites and that was really fun

Here is the birds nest

and the water cube

the Next day we went to the GREAT WALL OF CHINA!! (it totally deserves the caps)

It was super busy because the time we went it was a major holiday for pretty much the whole east.... and they ALL decided to com to Beijing.

The Forbidden city was Huge... and when I say huge I don't mean big I mean Flipping Ginormous!

we were there for most the day and didn't even get half of it done.

then we went to the Temple of Heaven, which is pretty much a huge park with a big temple in the middle and there were tonz of people doing parky thing there, like exercising and playing ball and doing tai chi and folding their bodies in ways that should not be humanly possible... stuff like that.

this guy was so funny, he was directing the audience to sing with his band... I would have sung too but I couldn't read the music they all had :'(

Xi An

Home to the Terra Cotta Warriors!

This was one of my favorite things throughout my whole vacation, I was just so fascinated with the whole thing.

There were three pits

Pit 3.

Every single statue in this pit was broken when enemies of the emperor destroyed the tomb.

This guy was the only guy in the tomb left together, in no need of repairing, they called him the 'lucky one.'

Pit 2.

This pit was the smallest... and frankly not very exciting but it was still cool.

Pit 1.

This pit is where all the money is going, this is where all the focus is. It felt like all the researchers put all the other pits on hold just to work on this one... and I don't blame them.

I may just take one home with me.

Icy

our ice box is taking over our fridge

Have you seen it yet?

let me help, here is a closer picture.

Yup, it has almost completely devoured our ice tray.

Yangshuo

A few weeks ago we went to Yongshuo, the site of the all famous Dr. Seuss Mountains and the rice terraces. It was so beautiful and breathtaking, the pictures really don't do it justice.

We found a local tour guide who helped us get up-close and personal with the mountains, we were weaving in and out all through them.

Oh, and I rode one of these

Yup, drink it in people, drink. it. in.

this really happened.

After the tour we climbed to the top of moon hill

Right here to the very tippy top

It was really sketchy too. We found this pathway that said No Entry and of course that means 'come on in and make yourself at home'

It was a very hard steep path to the top but the view was breathtaking.

On a different day of vacation we went to the rice terraces, but on the way we stopped at the long haired village. These women grow their hair out till they are 18 then they cut it and grow it out again, they combine all their hair now and the hair they cut and put it on top of their head.

These women down there are not wearing hats... that's their hair.

this women has had children because she has a nice little bun on her forehead.

The rice terraces were beautiful... all i'm gonna say.

Yup I'm Mad

I got back from vacation to find this!

That is not dust on this hat folks

IT'S MOLD!

That stuff gets everywhere here

Here is saying good bye to a good hat.

Fenghuang

On our bus ride from Zhongjiajie to Fenghuang we met this really nice Chinese man named Nick. He spoke English really well and he was very cute so of course I just had to get my picture taken with him.

HA! Emily I found my own Nick!

He's making a weird face.... he doesn't always look like that.

There was this big platform in the middle of the city and they would play the drums ever half hour.

The buildings there were so cool I just loved to be there.

This town is known for their flattened pig faces... I don't know why you would want a flattened pig face, but I saw this one and had to take a picture of it.

Zhongjiajie (don't worry I still can't say it right)

Hey Guys... I'm not dead.... .... ... SURPRISE!

This was an....... interesting vacation. 

First a bit of background- In our group we have this person who is kinda a loner and will not have anything coming between him and his vacation.

We started out our vacation wrong because one of the girls in our group missed the bus to get us to the train station, but it was no sweat because there was plenty of time. We waited for her at the station and when she got there it was too late for her to get a ticket for our train, but that's ok because we could just wait for her at the other end. When we arrive we have about an hour so we go to dinner then come back 15 minutes before the meet time. The train comes, we are reunited with our group member, we wait for the person I had mentioned in the background. And we wait... and wait... and wait... and wait. He doesn't show up, this is worrying to us because 1. He has one of our sleeper train tickets so we can't even get into the building without him, and 2. We are in FLIPPING CHINA and he could be anywhere!

Long story short, we missed the train, got new tickets, had a 13 hour train ride turn into a 19 hour train ride, and lost a day of vacation. And it turns out that this lost person that we were so worried about just got on the train without us...

Needless to say we were a bit miffed.

But after all that drama we made it to the...

AVATAR MOUNTAINS!!

It was pretty cloudy but I still got some good pictures.

They had a glass bridge where you could see what would happen if you were to fall.

they had a point where you could buy these red flags and write a wish or something on it then tie it to the trees.

I even made one 

The most dangerous road in the world... yup I dove on it... it was actually the most careful I have ever seen a bus driver be.

The Stairs to Heaven was really cool but it was under construction so I couldn't go all the way up.