Second day in Beijing

Today was another busy day, but really awesome. The morning started off as usual with breakfast in the lobby with everyone - I woke up super-early for some reason, guess I'm not completely used to the new time yet. After breakfast, we all got on the bus to head outside the city towards the great wall. On our way there we stopped at a jade factory - we got a lecture about jade and then we got to see the whole process of making/carving all of the different pieces. I got a jade pendant for myself, it's really cute.

After the factory we made the rest of the drive to the great wall. We went to the Badaling section - it goes on foreverrrr. Our professor picked this one because he said it had the best view. We got there and it was freezing and windy out (as expected). Thankfully I brought along a hat and gloves with me (thanks Bryan!). Climbing the wall was the coolest thing ever...it twists and turns through mountains and seems to go on forever.
After the great wall we hit up a giant restaurant with french fries and closer to american-like Chinese food, it was great. They also had a copper enamel factory downstairs, so we got a quick tour of that, and then did some shopping at the gift shop.

Next, we went to walk around the olympic village..we saw the water cube (where all of the swimming and diving events took place) and the bird's nest. It was awesome to walk around there and take pictures. It was weird because like every where so far, there were still Christmas trees and Santas up all around the village.

After the village we headed to the silk market on the other side of the city. It was 10 floors of everything you could ever imagine. Really cheap prices, but the pushiest people I have ever seen. It was too much for me to handle, so I didn't do a whole lot of shopping (so unlike me!).

Next, we headed back to the hotel and had some free time. A bunch of us went to the Japanese restaurant in the hotel. It was like $17-18 for all you could eat off the menu and all you can drink beer and rice wine..needless to say we got a ton of sushi and ate/drank there for like 2 hours..it was fun :). I crashed shortly after dinner.