"Nihao"

                                            Frozen river/moat around the Forbidden City!

Hello or nihao from China!  Boy is it freezing here....wind chill is around 10 degrees!! We were finally able to access our blog from over here and wanted to update everyone about our Chinese adventures!  We landed on Friday around 5 am (we managed to skip Thursday due to the time change..yay for our budget haha!) After settling at the hostel, we ventured out and had some dumplings and soup for breakfast.  Then we saw Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City, which was amazing.  It's so big!  We mistakenly came back to our room to 'rest.'  I closed my eyes for one minute and the next thing I knew it was dark outside...Whoops!  Yesterday we woke up and went to the Great Wall with our two roommates.  The roads were a bit icy so the public buses weren't running. We took a cab and fortunately, there were hardly any tourists at the wall so we got some fabulous pictures!!  We then toured the Olympic area, went to a night market that sells normal food (starfish, seahorses, scorpions and snake to name a few!), walked around a huge mall and finally called it a night with a big glass of beer!  We stayed up till 10pm last night, woohoo!  Today is New Years Eve and we'll see what we can find to do....the worldwide new year is not nearly as celebrated as the Chinese New Year, which is Feb. 10 this year so there are no major fireworks or parties, but I'm sure we can find something! Enjoy these few pictures...more will come in the next few days. Off to Hong Kong on Wednesday!!

                                                  Forbidden City

                                                                Beautiful details!!

                                                    Check out the height of some of the steps!

                                                    A view of the mountains from the Great Wall

                                       If you're not careful.....steepest stairs we've ever seen!

                                                                         We made it!!