Today was our fourth day in Beijing and our last before we leave and take the bullet train to Xi’an.  This morning the firs thing we did was visit Tiananmen Square and the forbidden city.  The Forbidden City was where the emperors used to live, and it was also the political center.  It was interesting to learn about more of the history of Beijing at both Tiananmen Square and the forbidden city.  The forbidden city was very beautiful, and it was huge!  Every time I thought we got all the way through, there was more.  My favorite part was the garden at the end where we got some really pretty pictures.

 After the Forbidden city we did a hutong tour which was riding down the streets where a lot of Beijing’s wealthy families live in rickshaws.  It was crazy to see the difference between wealth in Beijing and wealth in the US.  We visited the house of a guy named Mr. Wong’s.  His family has owned and lived in the same house for 150 years.  He told us he gets dozens of visitors to his house per day to see how Chinese people really live.  Mr. Wong and his family also had a few birds that could say hi in English and Chinese.  Overall it was really interesting to see how the local people in Beijing live. 

Then we had lunch at a delicious restaurant where some of the buys decided to eat chicken brains and tongue.  I am not so sure how they ate it since I almost barfed just watching.  But, besides the chicken brains our lunch was very good.  We also went to temple of heaven after lunch.  At the Temple of Heaven, we got a tai chi lesson.  The teacher taught us the Chen family tai chi which is just one of the many types of tai chi.  As usual we had an audience of people taking photos and videos of us while we learned tai chi.  The Temple of Heaven was a really beautiful building and it had a really great view of the city of Beijing from all angles.  But it was only after we got on the bus to go back to the hotel that we realized we were missing Matt.  He did finally make it back to the bus, but his little delay ruined our dairy queen plans.  On the bus ride back, we had to say a sad goodbye to our tour guide uncle joe.  

While some of our group went out and had chicken feet for dinner me and some of the girls decided to have ice cream in the hotel lobby as our dinner.  We also went to Starbucks for a boost of caffeine to keep ourselves from falling asleep. I’ll be sad to leave Beijing in the morning, but I’m also excited for the bullet train and Xi’an.