Happy Monday Morning Second Grade!

I hope that you had a great weekend. I will be traveling all day Monday and I hope that I will be back to see you on Tuesday morning. Tonight is the last night of the Olympic Games for 2008. The closing ceremonies are starting in about 1 hour Beijing time. I will not be going... the tickets are very expensive, but I hope to watch it on T.V. like you and maybe see some fireworks from the stadium. Mrs R. said you wondered why the workers marched to work. I really don't know why, it was something I wondered about too. My guess is that the Chinese people are trying very hard to make a good impression on the world. They like things neat and orderly and I think it is just their way of doing things well. I wish that I would had bought a Popsicle like I took a picture of so I could taste it, but I didn't. I looks like it would melt, but I am not sure. I haven't been able to find out much about their school system yet, but I am working on it! I am excited to come back home and see all of you. I have lots more pictures and stories to share with you. See you very soon!!

Hello Second Grade!

Good morning! I am writing this while you are sleeping! It is 10:48 p.m. I hope you are all resting for a big day tomorrow! Mrs. Ritterbush sent me an e-mail and said you had a great first 2 days. This will be your first long day. Are you ready? If you have any questions about China that your want me to find out let me know! I will do my best to find the answers. Have fun and I will write you again tomorrow.

Summer Palace

Hello everyone! It is raining pretty hard here and we don't have any sightseeing scheduled today, so I am catching up on blogging and pictures. I seem to be having some weird things happen with my picture gallery. I am working on it hopefully it will be working soon. The picture above is from the summer palace. The palace was built for the Emperor so he could get away from it all in the heat of the Beijing summer. They dug this enormous lake that you see and piled up the dirt behind it so they could have a mountain. The landscaping is beautiful and as you can see you can rent a boat, paddle boat, or ride across the lake in a large boat like this one. We walked across the bridge that you see to an island and then rode the big boat to the palace. It is so large that we walked around for about 3.5 hours and we didn't even see it all. We took another boat, it think it is a keel boat, with one big oar in the back to another street on the palace grounds. It reminded me of Venice with the shops lining the water streets. We shopped and I had my fortune told by an old Chinese guy. I am sure he enjoys making money off of the tourists!
We headed back in taxi, the traffic was really bad and we had to show our tickets for the evening session to a security guard to exit the highway and get back to our hotel. I am glad I stuck them in my trusty backpack!

Happy First Day of School Everyone!

Hello Mrs. Ritterbush and second graders! I hope you have a great first day! I am having a great time. I hope you have fun reading about China and seeing my pictures. I am looking forward to seeing all of you soon!

Pictures!

I have posted lots more photos in my mac gallery. Here is the link http://gallery.me.com/berreckman#100043. I will be updating it as I download new photos! I hope you enjoy them!

The Great Wall and My First Bargaining

First of all, our luggage finally arrived on Saturday night when we got back from the evening session of track! My feet were shouting yippee! My running shoes would take me to the Great Wall in the morning! I have two huge blisters on my feet from my flip flops! My feet seem to swell when I fly a long distance and the flip flops were not cutting it!
We left for the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall at 8:00. It is a little over an hour away from Beijing. When we arrived we learned that we could walk up to the wall 1,ooo steps or ride the cable car. Well... those of you that know Claude know there really was only one way up. I hate to feel like a wimp and ride when he walks, so you guessed it, we walked up. It was definitely a hike! Huffing, puffing and sweating about 25 minutes later we arrived on the wall. The wall was amazing and it is definitely worth the hike. I guess doing the work to walk up made me appreciate a little more the hard work and sacrifice it must taken to build it. We were lucky I heard, because it was a pretty clear day and we were able to see for a long way. The section that we visited was very steep at points. Check out the picture! There were sections of the original stone steps that were exposed, however the greatest portion had been restored. We hiked about 3k of the wall and took many pictures. We were told not to miss the toboggan down the wall. Unfortunately, the light rain showers that we experienced on the wall closed the slide. We did ride down the lift and enjoyed the view.
At the base of the great wall is of course a large trading street. We were told to bargain hard and you could get a good deal. Well... I think I learned a lesson in bargaining my first time around and I hope that next time goes better. Here is my advice ...make sure that you have your merchandise in your hand when your give them your money!! We had finally agreed on a price for the 4 items that we wanted to buy. I had not picked them up and then the lady wanted to only give me two of the items and make me pay more for the other two. I couldn't walk away because she had my money and the stuff I wanted!! Yikes! She was not to happy, but she finally gave in!! Whew... I know that we still overpaid her, so I didn't feel too bad!
The next big excitement in the group was spotting some of the members of the US men's basketball team. Dwayne Wade, Carlos Boozer and Chris Paul were spotted at the wall. Carlos wouldn't let any pictures be taken, but Dwayne was posing for pictures and talking to one of the kids on our tour.
On our way back to Beijing, we stopped and ate at a restaurant. We really had not eaten a meal in China yet, so it was fun to experience some real Chinese food. Some of it was familiar and some...not so much!!!. I promise to take a few pictures next time I eat so you can see what it looks like. Well, we need to get ready to go to the track. More later! Watch the Today show Monday morning. We found the set and we are going to try to get on!!

We made to China, our luggage did not!

Woohoo we are finally here! We were scheduled to fly out of Denver on Aug 13th around 11:00a.m. so we could get on a flight in San Fransisco that left at 6:00. We had two flights cancel in Denver and after many hours waiting in and talking to Customer service we finally got rerouted LA and then to Beijing. We arrived about 4:30a.m. Beijing time Friday the 15th without our luggage! Our tickets were for the first session in the Bird's nest at 9:00. So... we showered and got ready to go. Luckily our tour company had given us shirts so we had a clean one to wear! We are about a 15 minute walk from the stadium. I put up a few pictures. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. In the first session we were in a suite with the mom and brother of heptathlete Jacqueline Johnson. It was fun to watch her compete with her family. We were unable to see the scoreboard that was in English, however, so it was a little difficult to see the results. We did figure out the Chinese symbol for USA so we could find them! The stadium was filled and the Chinese people love to support their athletes so it would be very loud when they were racing. We stayed late last night and saw the women's 10,000. What an exciting finish--new world record and Shalene Flanagan won the bronze. We also watched the men's shot put. Christan Cantwell won the silver and we saw our first medal ceremony. Now we are headed out to explore. We have tickets to the evening session. More later...hopefully our luggage will arrive today!