Hong Kong and China

We were only in Hong Kong for one day, but I managed to get as much out of Hong Kong as humanly possible in that day. We got off the ship as soon as we could and wandered around town. Obviously wandering has become one of my favorite things to do. It involves a lot of walking around aimlessly with no real destination, yet that is how I get the most out of a place. What I found in Hong Kong was that it is very westernized to the point where I was relating it to New York City and that it is really trendy. I felt that because I wasn’t wearing my converse high tops with a designer handbag that I was being looked down upon. But that is ok. I still enjoyed my time there. From Hong Kong I left for Beijing. My trip was hosted by Peking University, which is the Chinese equivalent to Harvard. Not only did this trip do the usual site seeing in Beijing, but it also provided our group the opportunity to hang out and get to know Peking University students. This was honestly really cool. All of the students were incredibly intelligent and most of them were going to the United States (aka- Harvard and a few other places) for graduate school. They were very open, which allowed me and the other blunt SAS students to ask them all sorts of questions about China and their opinions on the United States. This was fun and in some cases even funny. I love honesty. One night we played games with the students, which was so much fun. Trying to explain to a bunch of Chinese students how to play limbo was possibly my highlight of the evening. We had a great time. Along with hanging out with these students we also did the typical Beijing site seeing. Like, the Great Wall. I hiked up the Great Wall of China. Yes I did. It was A LOT steeper than I imagined and had MUCH larger steps as well. And once we got to the top point of our section of the wall, I felt so very accomplished. Just looking down and seeing what we had climbed up was incredible. We had just climbed up the Great Wall of China. The flippin Great Wall of China. We also visited the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Ming Tombs. All pretty cool. But what was even more exciting was when we visited Tiananmen Square. For some reason I was really really into Tiananmen Square. Its quite possible that its history just really intrigues me, but actually being there, in the square, wow. At one point a couple of us made a human peace sign lying down in the middle of the square. It just made sense at that moment. Also, on a fun little side note, while in the square we got bombarded by what I like to call the Chinese paparazzi. There were about 5-10 of us SAS students just kind of people watching when a few Chinese people came up to us and asked to take pictures with us. Ok, cool right? Well, following those few people another group came up and wanted to take pictures with us as well. This went on for like 30 minutes. We must have been in some 50 random peoples pictures. One woman even pushed her daughter into our group and took a picture. It was really funny and entertaining. And it didn’t really stop in Tiananmen Square either, it continued on into the Forbidden City and everywhere we went. I felt like a star. Oh, and we also went to an acrobatic performance. Holy moley. That was crazy. These people were bending into positions that God clearly didn’t intend people to bend into. I had never seen anything like it.