"this sure is a great wall"

i know it's been a while since i last rapped at ya, but i got hit hard at the end of last week by the ganmao, chinese for a hardcore winter cold that everyone in north china gets, and my stomach all of a sudden decided to quite quickly process anything i choose to eat. but i'm back on the up and up now, so i'm ready to assail you all with some more tales and pictures.

not last weekend, but the one before, we went out to the great wall. the above quote is reportedly what nixon said when he visited in 1972. the wall actually is pretty awesome. there's really nothing like it. we went to a section called mutianyu, which is sort of the second most popular tourist spot, but since it was winter there's pretty much nobody there. we walked along it for about an hour, had lunch, and slowly made our way back. it's really slow going for some reason, but we weren't in much of a hurry anyway.

here is me on the great wall of china. i bought a cheesy yellow t-shirt. you can see it in the fall.

the weather was relatively warm last week, but turned bitterly cold again for this weekend, which was great (!), because i was sick and our trip took us out to the temple of heaven. oh, before i forget, i also headed out to the forbidden city, which is actually not all that exciting. but anyway, the temple of heaven is pretty cool. it is within an enormous park. the part where you enter takes you along the "porch" of an old building, where hundreds of old people come to chat, dance, play music, gample, excercise, and try to sell you stuff. we talked with a bunch of them, and they were all very excited to tell us that they loved being retired. they come out to the park pretty much everyday. the average retirement in china seems much better than in the states.

the temple of heaven is way in the background. i took this picture standing on the circle mound, which is part of the whole temple of heaven ceremony thing. read a china guide book if you want to know more.

otherwise life had been pretty uneventful. i watched an entire movie in chinese, with chinese subtitles, and actually understood it, which is exciting. i've found that most of the time i can understand what people are saying, though a lot of the time i can't understand why they're saying what they're saying, or what i think they're saying. sheesh. oh, we also all went to a traditional chinese music performance at a tea house on friday night. it was good. that is all. i will leave you all with a picture of a camel enjoying the taste of the delicious fences of the beijing zoo:

love, BEN

p.s. it appears that people are actually posting comments on our blog. i can only imagine what exciting interchanges and witty remarks are being held. however, i would like to reiterate that we cannot see them, so if you want to communicate with us, please do so by e-mail.