July 11th in China, Tour of the water plant and a Beijing Suburb!!

We got up early this day to get read for our first day of touring that was set up by BOCOG (The organization we are working for). Our first day started out as we arrived at the Beijing Water Treatment plant. It wasn't the most exciting of tours but we still got to see that Beijing is working on improving the city and all that. After the water treatment plant we headed to lunch, it was pretty good, it was about the same as every place we go to. They serve several dishes all in family style. After lunch, Matt, Mark, Allie, Whitney and I all headed across the street to get some ice cream. I wasn't feeling too good so I just got a soda and then got back on the bus to try and sleep a little bit. At about 1:30 (we had an hour or so break for lunch) we were met by police cars that escorted our buses out of Beijing. They blocked the roads and everything so that our buses didn't get separated. We drove out into the country for what seemed like forever. It was actually almost a 2 hour bus ride to get out to a new Beijing village. It is a modern suburb like village that is like a test site to see if the living conditions are favorable and to see if people enjoy the new homes and area. The government hopes to make every village like this one eventually. it was pretty nice though. It had a country club next to it, with a really fancy golf course. It is also located in the mountains so the area is beautiful. There are many 3 sided courtyard houses here, that are similar to the Hutongs that we visited at the beginning of our stay here in China. All the buses stopped for a bathroom break after we drove around the country club. This break was hectic because there were only about 300 STUDENTS on all the buses! HAHAHA So it was a long and crazy break, but after we all got back on the buses we were led to one of the courtyard home sites and each group was able to visit one of the new homes. They were ok, not super fancy but nice. They were all connected too, as you will see in my pictures when I get them up. After we left the homes we went to see a newer temple that had been constructed for worship for the people of this new more modern village. It was pretty cool, set in the mountains, numerous fountains and was made to look like the old traditional buildings and temples such as the ones seen in the Forbidden City. Also next to the temple were some more homes only these new homes were more upscale and apparently were owned by a couple of celebrities. The set of houses actually reminded me of San Fransico and so was deemed Chan Fransico. haha! After we visited the temple we were led to another part of the "New Village", here we got to witness people practicing Tai Chi in one of the courtyards it was pretty cool. They are very graceful and then they invited people from our group to join in. Our professor Larry was probably the funniest haha, just for the mere fact that he was like 2 feet taller than everyone else doing the Tai Chi, considering the group doing the tai chi were senior citizen chinese people! HAHA So after Tai Chi we got to visit a calligraphy master. That was pretty cool, he made some things for us to watch and then let some of the kids in our group try. I was busy snapping pictures so I didn't get a chance to try my hand at it. Oh well. After that we were led to a old folks home right next door to the calligrapher and I just walked through to see how it was and then after that we loaded on the buses for the long ride back to Beijing. We ended up being on the bus for over 2 hours because of traffic. We finally arrived at our restaurant and I was excited to get to eat the Peking Duck again. It is really a good dish, and I got to teach our table how to eat it because I learned that while back in the states from one of the books I read about Beijing. After dinner we were led to the buses and on the way I was able to purchase an Olympic hat off a street vendor for like 2 bucks. When I got to the room that night I was pretty pooped so I showered, checked my e-mail and turned in. The next day I would get to visit the Great Wall!!!!