October 1 - November 9, 2010

October 1 - 31

Like I mentioned earlier, I arrived back in Wenzhou from Hong Kong on the 1st of October. I was so tired that I pretty much lazed around for the first two days of the National Holiday. The National Holiday is held from October 1st to the 7th. It is a holiday to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic of China beginning October 1, 1949.

I managed to get a bit of traveling in. I’ve been to Beijing; the great wall, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the hero’s monument, and a famous Peking duck restaurant. The great wall is pretty “great” the spot I went to was very touristy though and was packed with people. Whenever I looked at pictures of it I always thought “hmm it’s a wall that runs through the country” but once I got there it was different. Yes the section of the wall that snakes through the hills still looks like the pictures and is relatively the same sensation, but when you see the wall itself and go climbing on it it’s way different. It must have been tough to live and work on that thing. The towers have four small windows that create wind tunnels; in the summer the draft might feel nice, but I can only guess how cold it would get in the winters. Some of the sections of wall are so steep that my muscles were tired after only a few minutes of climbing.

Tiananmen Square was interesting to see, but really only because I got to put a picture to what I learned about. It’s a big square with the government building on one side, Chairman Mao’s memorial building on another and the Forbidden City across from that. The hero’s monument is right in front of Chairman Mao’s memorial building.

Forbidden City was truly amazing! It’s huge and to see only a small portion of the palaces was cool; we took 4 hours to walk through only some of what’s available to the public. It would take days to go through the entire place! The only thing is it wasn’t very pretty; there are a few gardens here and there but it’s all more built for functionality than looks.

The Peking duck was SO delicious. I loved most of the food we ate in Beijing; they have the most delicious snack foods! My favorite was the pancakes. They’re fried breads essentially with bits of veggie and meat in them.

Next I went to Hong Kong to visit for a couple days and to renew my visa. I wasn’t really impressed; it just looks like a very big, crowded city, not to mention all the people pushing you to go see the things they have for sale. The one thing that surprised me was at night time it seemed like you were walking around during the day because there were so many lights and bright signs everywhere.

My family came to visit in October. It was so nice to see them again and it made me miss them more this time around than when I first left. We just stayed around Wenzhou area though because all of us were on budgets. It was still nice though and I think I managed to get the majority of everything that they all needed or wanted. We went to a small village called Yong Jia; where we celebrated our birthday with fireworks and two boxes of giant beers. I had a wonderful time.

November 1 - 9

As far as November goes, I have been a hermit trying to restore my energy levels.