Day Four

Day 4

The last two days started out with rain. Although today was not as hard as yesterdays it drizzled on and off for most of the day. This moisture in the air caused it to be very muggy. This was not only held but it was also seen, although most days have a haze to them because of the high pollution rate the moisture made it extremely low hanging. Even though this was the case today was a day filled with site seeing and walking! The English teacher here, who is from the Twin Cities, took me site seeing today! This gave me my first bus and subway experience in China. Some of them where so full with people and I had to remember to duck getting on and off the subway otherwise I would hit my head by like 2 inches. We went to the where the 2008 Olympics where held. It was cool to see how vast the buildings are and how big of area they occupied for the entire site! They used the earth from the construction of the birds nest and the pond to build three large hills. Almost everything there took about 5 years to complete including the hills. I really wish I could post pictures of some of the architecture that was around the campus. It was really cool. They often had unique ways of tying all of the components together! We spent most of the day walking around there. On the way, back we stopped at the number one university in China. Peking University was one of the nicest campuses I have ever seen in my life! It was graduation day so there where many people walking around the campus taking pictures. I saw campus here but in reality park would be a better description of the university grounds. If I did not know that, it was a college I would have thought it was a park. In fact, it was 100 times nicer than the park on the Olympic grounds. It had more stone pathways, bodies of water and quiet remote areas than any national park I have been to in the states. It was so impressive that I forgot that it was surrounded by bustling city streets of Beijing. In fact while on the campus I hardly heard a single horn, which is a constant else wear. Although it does not seem like I did much today I had an exciting day and managed to feel like a celebrity as I had more people come up to me to take pictures with me or even just try sneak some of me.