Final Day in Beijing

Another early morning, with another easy awakening, being a morning person is strange . . . Another wonderful breakfast filled with starch ! I'm not complaining they were really good meals, it just felt like a dinner. We gathered all our luggage in the foyer so it could go ahead to the train station. Winston met us outside the hotel and we had a trip to the Summer Palace, on the bus ride we took turns at entertaining each other, some tols jokes, normally really bad ones, Sunshine, Renolds wife, sang us a song in Chinese, because she's awesome! The Palace is the oldest royal garden kept in Beijing, and although it was a phenominal experiance I can't find the right words to describe it, instead I'll post pictures when I can. The palace is famouse for it's longevity hill and the longest art gallery in china, which is a walkway with amazing paintings along it's route, we went to the far side of the lake and had sometime to explore I had fun hanging out with Jim and Nancy two retired teachers who are on the trip. I was really tired after the bus ride, the long day, and after being in the sun my lips wrer really hurting, at this point I thought they'd been sun burnt.
Next on the schedual was the Temple of Heavens again my memory is fuzzy, maybe I was tired then but I'm more so now, (I've been doing a lot of homework yet the stack doesn't seem to get smaller.) The Temple is one of the most holy in China, it was where every year the Emperor would come and worship heaven, this was important because the Emperor was the bridge between heaven and man, if things went poorly in the harvest and the country was dissatisfied the people would claim that the Emperor had lost the "mandate of Heaven". The temple was built in the Ming dynasty (1420) and I was looking forward to the Three Echo's room. With all that aside we didn't go, I believe we found that it was closed, or perhaps we just ran out of time, either way there will be no photo's becaus we weren't there.
We went to the hotel and gathered our carry on luggage, all of our liquids had to be in our carry on instead of our checked which felt completely backwards. We rode to the train station said our goodbyes to winston and wendy, and traveled to the waiting room, where we waited, and waited . . . Dr Guo came and gave us our tickets with our berth numbers, it was an overnight train so we would actually have beds. Four to a room. We were told that we could switch our tickets around if we wanted so when a girl asked to switch so she could be with her friends I obliged, at this point I didn't really mind who i was staying with. Until I found the compartment I would be staying it, with two unknown gentlemen. Feeling rather uncomfortable I was glad when my friend Patrick took my berth so I could be with some other girls from my trip, Dana, Brittanie, and Nick (no Nick isn't a girl). patrick came and hung out with us as did Charlotte a girl that promptly became a very good friend, Now me patrick and Charlotte are almost always hanging out together, we have formed our own little clique and I'm not certain how the second half of this trip will play out without them .. . we'll find out. To say there was a party on the train would be an understatment, beer in China is rediculously cheap, and a few members were very excited over this, also we met a group of students from Illinois, and the chance to get to talk to Americans was not to be passed lightly. However it was slightly annoying when I was trying to sleep, at one point I was abit of a party pooper, opening my door reaching down from the top bunk and grabbing a guys shoulder teling them to please take their singing elsewhere, which they did so i didn't feel bad, except that I freaked the guy from Illinois out and I didn't even know his name. So I finally got to sleep, The next morning I was remarkable relaxed, the train had literally rocked me to sleep, Another wonderful thing abaout waking up is I'd ordered tea the night before and it managed to arrive just as I was rubbing the sleep from my eyes, can't ask for better service. Another few hours passed as we waited Charlotte Patrick and I hung out some more, truely forming our clique. Then we arrived jumped on a bus and hit the hotel, Showers all around! YAY, by the way my lips still hurt, but I was to tired to let it bug me too much, and Jan had agreed to give me her other chapstick so I felt pretty good about it.