Hangzhou!

Hello from Hangzhou! We apologize for not getting to post much about Xi'an, but we'll post pictures of it as soon as we're home. This morning, we took a short flight from Xi'an to Hangzhou, and began our tour of Hangzhou shortly after. The weather in Southern China is extremely humid, and it was raining very hard throughout most of the day. First, we visited the old house of a famous Chinese entrepreneur. After touring the house with our guide, we received some free time to roam around by ourselves. Several of us found a small man made cave system with a small pond inside. We went on a little adventure through the caves with Wu 老师's daughter, Nicole.

After visiting the house, we drove out to the Mei Jia Wu Tea Village. We got to drive through vast fields and terraces where a huge amount of green tea is grown. Hangzhou is the most well-known city for tea in China, and the Mei Jia Wu tea is some of the very best. We learned how tea is grown and prepared, and then we went to a tasting and demonstration. We sampled some high quality green tea, and learned all about its health benefits and use in daily life.

We ended the day with a casual dinner near the Tea Village, and returned to the hotel where we met Wu 老师's mother and father (爸爸妈妈)! We also got to meet one of Wu 老师's friends from Evanston who often went to her tea shop. She got him interested in Chinese, and he is now working in Hangzhou!

It was a long day, but we're having an incredible time and we're excited for our last few days in China. Goodnight!

Hey everybody! We just took an overnight train from Beijing, and we're relaxing for the morning in our new hotel in Xi'an. We're sorry that haven't had a chance to post since we arrived, but internet has been spotty, and our schedule has been hectic (as you can imagine!). A few of us are here together right now, and we'd like to post a bit about what we've been doing the past three days! Pictures will come later, but for now we'll just write.

On Friday, our first full day in Beijing, we began with a visit to the Summer Palace, the summer residence for many Ming and Qing emperors. It was beautiful, and we even got to take a ride on a dragon boat on the lake that surrounds the palace. At this point, we realized that Americans in China seem to be a tourist attraction of their own. The blondes, especially Maggie, Lizzie, Ross, and Kathryn, have found that the Chinese love to sneak pictures of them. Later that day, we got to visit our pen pals. We've been in contact with them since around February, so meeting them in person was fascinating and extremely exciting. We all agree that this was a highlight of our trip thus far.

On Saturday, we visited one of the Wonders of the World, the Great Wall of China. As we drove through the mountains and got our first glimpse of the wall, none of us could believe that we would actually be about to climb the Great Wall. The wall itself is absolutely breathtaking. All of us climbed up the Wall as far as we could, and several of us made it all the way to the top! We learned from our tour guide Calvin that Chairman Mao once said that no one is truly a hero until they have stepped foot on the Great Wall. And so after our experience on the Wall, we are all heroes! That afternoon, we visited the Beijing Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube. We got to walk around and take pictures (while even more people took pictures of us!). At night, we got to go to a tea house to watch a tea house ceremony show and to drink some authentic Chinese tea.

Yesterday, on our last day in Beijing, we began by walking through Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the residence and offices of the emperor and his people during the Ming and Qing Empires. The City was massive, and took us over and hour to walk through in the heat, but every building was beautiful (we'll post pictures soon!). For lunch, we went to the Hutong region of Beijing, and rode a rickshaw to eat a meal with a local family! We all loved eating a homemade meal for the first time in several days, and were extremely grateful for the family's hospitality. After a visit to the Temple of Heaven and a Taichi lesson, we boarded an overnight train to Xi'an. The train ride was a blast, and we've successfully arrived in Xi'an.

All in all, it's been an exhausting and incredible three days in China. We've all picked up new phrases in Chinese and learned all about the culture (including the interesting restrooms, the street vendors, and the general curiosity towards Americans). We still have so much left to do on our trip, and we can't wait to share it with everyone. We miss all of our friends and family and hope to talk to you all soon. Goodnight from Xi'an!

Hello friends and family!!! We are officially in China. We just spent our first night here at our hotel, and I know that more than a few of us woke up hours before our wake up call (it's only 5 pm at home...that's sortof disorienting). We have not experienced too much of China yet, but we've got a ton planned for today! We'll be visiting the Forbidden City in just a few hours.

Let us just quickly mention the plane ride here. I think we all agreed that those were some of the longest 13 hours of our lives. Just when we thought we were almost arriving, we'd check the flight path and see that we still had 9 hours to go. Nothing has ever felt so hopeless and monotonous.

But on the bright side, we are all here safe and sound, and each of us got our luggage. We will post again once we return from today's adventures.

Hello everybody! Just a quick post to get this blog up and running. We're all excited and getting ready for our trip. We'll be posting here as often as we can throughout the next couple of weeks to share stories and pictures from our adventures in China. Share this with any friends or family you would like to. We leave in just a couple of days, so we'll write again soon!