Three days down and fifteen more to go

Hi everybody! It's the end of day three in China and we have had more exciting adventures. First, thanks to everyone for leaving comments. We miss you all and can't wait to see you.

We started our day by going to the CCTV building. It's still under construction so we posted the graphic picture of what it will look like. It will be used as the communications hub for the 2008 Olympics. Our trip here was exciting because, of course, it started raining right when we got out of the taxi.



Welcome to the squaty-potty! These toilets are everywhere including places like the airport. Of course there are western/modern toilets at some places, but otherwise you have to squat and that goes for men too if necessary. Unfortunately, most of them have a foul odor to go along with them. Plus, you can't throw your toilet paper in them so you have to throw it in the basket.
Many don't even have toilet paper so you need to keep some napkins handy for when nature calls.

Our trip to Mutianyu

We decided to take a tour to Mutianyu which is a less visited and restored section of the Great Wall. There were very few people here and the Great Wall is as beautiful and stunning as you dreamed of. Part of the fun getting to this section was driving through rural China. It was very different from the big city.

Mom and dad getting off the lift to the Great Wall.
The Great Wall is very steep and some steps are small and while others are quite large making it difficult to climb.
This is a picture of the unrestored section of the Great Wall which is the majority of the wall. As you can see there was lots of vegetation growing on the ruins plus part of it has disintegrated.

Of course we had the option of going right or left at the lift, we choose to the right which required lots of stairs climbing. If we had only chosen to go to the left there were not steps. Why do we always pick the hard way?

On our way back to Beijing from Mutianyu we drove by the Olympic Stadium, aka Bird's Nest, and the Aquatic Center, aka The Cube. We were able to get much better pictures than yesterday.

Our tour also stopped at the a "Silk Museum" or should I say tourist trap to buy silk. Although it was interesting to see how the silk was harvested from the cocoons and transformed into fabric.

Tomorrow, 9/14, we will be going on another tour to the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and an acrobatics show. Hopefully it will not rain again tomorrow.

Matt and Jenny