FINALLY MADE IT TO CHINA!!! by Danny Luu

China is such a beautiful country with 1.6 billion people! My first impression of Beijing, China after we got off the plane was that it was so amazing that we finally made it to China. After, we got off the plane and retrieved our bags, we met Angela, our tour guide for Beijing. She took us to our hotel which was a four star hotel called Sunworld Hotel. It was a beautiful hotel; however, I was expecting an Asian-style toilet which would be a hole in the floor that you had to crouch on.  Much to my surprise, it was a Western-style toilet.  The most difficult thing that Tyler and I had to do was to learn to keep our  hotel room key in a slot in order to keep the lights and air conditioning on.  This is a nice energy-saving system.  That first night, Dr. Huang took us to a small restaurant for our first meal in Beijing. It was so good, but not very spicy.  My first night in Beijing made me so happy and excited to be surrounded by people of my race and to be able to speak with them and improve my Mandarin. The air in Beijing was kind of bad and as a result I had a stuffy nose the whole three days that I was there.

 The meals that Angela, our guide, had arranged for us were so delicious that I pretty much ate a lot than I normally do. We also walked around the surrounding area of the hotel in order to get to know the place a lot more. I had so much fun walking on the Great Wall of China and most of all visiting the Forbidden City. Everywhere that I went, I felt that peoples were looking at me with weird looks on their face.  I think that Chinese people here in Beijing expect me to be fluent in Chinese and they are surprised when I speak English. 

I found Beijing to be such an interesting place and I would like to visit again!  We went to the Olympic Village on our second day and saw the Bird's Nest stadium and the Water Cube.  The United State doesn’t have a building that looks like a bird's nest or a water cube that shape like a dragon. We also went out to an area called Lotus Lane, which was filled with restaurants and night clubs surrounding a beautiful lake and providing an amazing lake view. The last night in China was kind of relaxing because we didn’t do much. Dr. Huang and Professor Dyer took us out to one of a noodle restaurant that had some delicious noodles and rice plates for our last meal in Beijing. I didn’t get much sleep, but Julianna, Christie, Taylor, and I woke up early and did our final walk around the surrounding area of the hotel in Beijing before boarding our plane for Chongqing.

P.S My friends and family -- I’m safe and having lots of fun in China!  I will send pictures later.

The "Group" in front Forbidden City

Danny at Forbidden City

Approaching Forbidden City

The Olympic Complex

The "Group"

We Like to Pose as a Group (left to right: Professor Mao, Ronnie, Professor Dyer, Taylor, Danny, Kaiti, Carly, Christie, Mohamed, Julianna, Tyler, Professor Huang