A Picture Can Tell a Thousand Words. . .

Today, several us got up early to venture to Fragrant Hills Park and climb Incense Burner Peak where you get a great view of Beijing. The weather was gorgeous for our 1 ½ hour hike to the top. The sky was bright blue (a rarity in Beijing)! The trail was a little bit more intense than most of us expected. We were happy when the trail looked like this:

Most of the trail, however, looked like this:

The view of Beijing was awesome!

We felt incredibly accomplished when we reached the top!

At the peak, they were serving a Chinese delicacy, which I am unlikely to EVER try. THOUSAND YEAR OLD EGGS! It is an egg, which they boil and bury for about a month. The eggs are then harvested and seasoned. Yum . . . ???

In other news, I went to the Beijing Zoo on Thursday and saw pandas! This panda was my favorite:


Biggest cultural adjustment so far is squatters!!! Western toilets are hard to come by. Toilets have thus become a big topic of conversation for the group. Yay!