Catching up

Hello!

Sorry for the few days of no posts, but blogger was apparently blocked in China, so I couldn't get on. anyway here is what I wrote from our first day:

                After two flights, one to Chicago and the other to Beijing, I can say we have successfully made it to china! But since we are now on the other side of the world, my morning is your nights so sorry if I update the blog at ridiculously late hours.

So 14 hours and lots of movies after we left Chicago, we arrived in Beijing at about 3 pm local time, so we had to stay up until nightfall. We decided to go the pearl market and do a little shopping, and actually ended up staying until closing time. We asked the employees where to eat dinner, went to their recommendation, and ate among the local, we got some funny stares as we were not expected to know about this place, and we had to look around to see how the other people ate. I guess we really did look completely out of place, but the food was delicious anyway.

 We got back to the hotel, showered, and with some help of a sleeping pill, got to bed at  good time. See you guys tomorrow!

And here's a small recap of the past two days:

So since we only had one full day in China, we decided to tour the entirety of Beijing in one day. this entailed going to the Great Wall in the morning and the Olympic park on the way to our final destination of the Forbidden city. Each of these places was amazing in its own right, but I have to say I was slightly disappointed with the state of the wall and the city. You would think that these symbols of Chinese history would be well kept, but they were dusty and full of litter. they were still pretty breath taking, by no doubt, but it was still a little sad to see a nation's history in such disrepair. anyway, after we finished with the Forbidden City, we found our way back on the subway (not easy seeing that I cannot even try to read Chinese) and got to bed.

Today we got on a plane to Mongolia (finally) and got lucky that once we landed the bag that has medical supplies did not get flagged and we got in with all our stuff. we then proceeded to the hospital to get all of the medicine dropped off and get a little tour of what the set up will be this year. after that we did a little souvenir shopping, as we wont have too much time once the work starts. I think that the plan for tomorrow is to go look at the countryside, but it is still up in the air. see you guys tomorrow!

- Bekah A.