Next - China

*****Due to restrictions of the Internet in China, we can not post any pictures on our blog.....but we will keep trying*******

We made it to Beijing, China! We took the airport train into Beijing, then made our way to our hostel. We are staying at Sanlitun Youth Hostel for about $9.50 a night. The place is huge and has many foreigners and locals staying here. We had booked the cheapest room, 10 beds, and we got what we paid for! The room was an absolute dump! Trash everywhere and stuff everywhere. It was impossible to even tell which beds were occupied and which were empty. We cleared a passage to a bunk bed and put our stuff down. I went down to the desk to complain, but they are NOT the most helpful hostel staff we've met.
We ended up meeting all of our every interesting and kind room mates. They taught us about the over priced beers at the hostel and showed us a store that sold them for 2.5 yuan, thats about .40 cents!
Our first full day in Beijing we went to the Forbidden City, where the movie "The Last Emperor" was filmed and to Tian namen Square.
Our second day we went with Michelle, Rob, and Andres(Our hostel friends) to the Great Wall. Our plan was to hike from Jinshanling to Simatai, a 10 km walk that would take about 4.5 hours. Only we took a wrong turn at the wall just as we entered it and walked away from our "destination". We hiked for just over 3 hours when we found we came to a dead end. It was barred off and said it was for the military ONLY. We turned around a little disappointed, but actually it all worked out because we got to be on an EMPTY GREAT WALL! We didn't see anyone for hours, and we were able to take Amazing pictures!
Third day, we went to The Temple of Heaven. This was a massive Temple with MANY MANY people visiting!
Today is our 4th day and we are going to the market to view the strange foods and animals they sell! We have heard that you can eat scorpions.....we shall see!

We went to the night market and let me just say they sell the craziest foods on a stick! When we can put pictures up, we will. But in the mean time to name a few....live scorpions, starfish, seahorses, bugs, sheep testicles, and snake!! I didn't eat any of them, but a person we went with ate the bugs and snake....they taste like chicken! Most of the market was geared toward tourist, everyday Chinese people don't eat these kinds of foods, they are expensive.

Today we went to the Olympic Park, it was AWESOME!!! We went during the day and stayed until the sun went down to see the buildings at night. Definitely need to see the pictures to see how amazing they buildings were!

Cost of things: Exchange rate $1= 6.7 Yuan...prices below are in US dollars-
Beer in a little shop next to us: .40 Cents
Subway: .33 cents each way
small food stalls: .15-$1.00
Entry to sights: $6-8
Beer in our hostel: $2.5
My favorite meal so far: Sweet and Sour pork: $3.2
A bunk bed in our hostel: $4.95/per night/per person