Oh my Lord. Day one in Beijing was crazy. After a fourteen hour flight from Newark to Beijing and some strategic sleeping during travel we finally made it to Beijing at about 1 p.m. local time. We had a delicious welcome dinner after figuring out how to convert our money with the help of our amazing Program Coordinators Nancy and Jane. We forced ourselves to stay up until the end of dinner (around 7:00pm), and then we all crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel. I think its safe to say I’m handling the time change pretty well, but I’m not tryin to jinx it.

The next day is when we really got going. My body woke itself up at about 5:30 and I lazed around in bed until 6:30 so I could go down and grab some breakfast. The food, again, was delicious and I was happy to hit up the espresso machine to get me ready for the day. At 8:00 we hopped on the bus to head for the Great Wall of China. Our tour guide, Joe, told us a bunch of “stories” about the Great Wall until we reached the section we were visiting. Dr. Li promised us it was about a 20-30 minute walk up to the top, but what he didn’t mention was that it was up steep flights of steps. We made it to the top and the view was absolutely stunning. We took a montage of photos and then tobogganed down to the bottom, which was personally my favorite part of the day.

Next we were treated to poppin traditional lunch and we hopped back on the bus to go see the Summer Palace. At the Summer Palace, quite a lot of people took photos of our group and came by just to look at us, because quite a few of our group had blonde hair. Joe told us another story about the Dragon Lady and we got to see all the places she lived in the Summer Palace. We then proceeded to get stuck in hella traffic before recovering in our hotel for a bit and then heading to an awesome traditional hotpot restaurant.

It’s safe to say I’m drained and my calves are shaking and this blog is horribly written, but I’m excited to see what day two brings!!