Days 1-6 (Beijing – Xi’an)

I have been here in china for a few days, and I have been unable to post due to lack of net access.

I arrived in Beijing Friday morning, and went strait to the hotel, the group all went out and the Sabbath observers stayed back, and enjoyed dinner with each other company.
Saturday came and went, it was spent sleeping, and getting over the jet lag.

Saturday night I took a cab to meet up with the group and met them at the Peking Opera, interesting, not my cup of tea, but to keep it short interesting and different.

Sunday we woke and headed down to breakfast, and it as still snowing, we headed from the hotel directly to the Great Wall, and it lived up to all my expectations of being a wall, it was an old wall, and extremely slippery due to the snow, I went up to the fourth tower and turned back. It was a great scene, I met people from countries all over the world, all of western Europe, but not England there was a small group from Ireland though; Australia, Singapore, Canada, and lots of folks back from the states.

After that we headed to Summer Palace, it was really nice and it would probably be even nicer in the summer. The frozen lake, and snow covered palace was serene, I have plenty of pictures, I’ll post them when I have a more steady internet connection.

After Summer Palace we started off to the train station to take the 12 hour train ride to Xi’an, we spent new years on the train it was an interesting place to get wasted. Anyway we arrived in Xi’an and we went to the hotel to eat and freshen up after the long haul, then we went to see the Terra Cotta warriors, in short it a bunch of toy soldiers, I really did not appreciate it all. After all it is nothing breathtaking, I have seen more toys in Toys R’ Us. We headed back to the hotel that night and I walked around lots of bars, lots of clothing stores that were mobbed, interesting city, hit the sack early.

ttyl