Well I’m back in Beijing again. Dralion has finished in Tokyo and Fuji Television is moving the tent from Tokyo to Fukuoka so I have 5 days off and since I was so close I decided to come back and see my friends over here. Thankfully I’m here now and not in a couple of months because I think it is going to truly CRAZY around here once the Olympics really start swinging into full speed.

Already the construction of buildings and infrastructure is going like mad. I’m interested to hear how the Chinese do, if they can finish it all or if they’ll be behind???

Today I was treated to a nice meal at a Barbecue restaurant by the former Diabolo girls. It was a nice meal and then I got to go watch them and their school train for about 1-1/2 sessions. It was a lot of fun and hopefully some of the pictures will come out nice to be able to share in the gallery.

I hope everyone is doing okay. I’ll be back in Fukuoka on the 12th, right now my skype phone number (630-448-4971) is forwarding to my friend Jenny’s cell here in China if anyone needs to get a hold of me.

ttys

Yesterday I went to the Great Wall of China (Huang Hua Zheng) with a friend of mine. I am attempting to upload the all of the pictures from this day but I am also going to try and put a couple of pictures here in my blog as well. Let’s hope that it works.

So the section of the Wall that I went to technically isn’t supposed to be climbed on but since it is in the Lonely Planet Guide book and has had some work done on it to refurbish it you can get away with going to it and climbing on it. As you will see in the pictures it was freaking huge but it was SO AMAZING!!!!!

Here is the first attempt at a picture of me sitting on some stairs leading from one of the “houses”:

We hiked on the wall, up and back for about 2-1/2 hours and I can’t even think of the number of stairs I went up and down. There were lots of ramps we climbed up and down as well. It truly was an amazing day. My GPS said that the total elevation gain for that section of the wall was about 1850 feet. I don’t know how much I can trust it right now but it was sure one hell of a climb.

I am about to go to the Ming tombs now so I’m going to end with another picture of the great wall. In this picture you can see one of the “houses” that are located along the wall but in the distance you can see what appears to be another one before the wall takes a sharp turn to the right. We hiked all the way up to this point.

Talk to you soon. Tonight will be my last night in Beijing I will head to Shanghai tomorrow evening for work However two weeks after that I’ll be flying home to Chicago. Hopefully I’ll do some backlogged posts soon. I heard it was said I don’t do enough at the Rafferty party so I will try to be better and enjoy the pictures.

Paul

I am currently in Beijing right now. I have been here for three days so far and I have been enjoying myself a lot. The first day here, Wednesday we did some driving around and have some good food but we didn’t really go see anything besides out the window of the Car. Yesterday my friend Paul and I went and walked through the Forbidden City, which is HUGE by the way I actually only covered about 1/3 of it and we were there for several hours, and after that we walked through Tiananmen Square. It was fun day and I have lot of pictures that I will hopefully start uploading today. We also went and saw the Beijing university for a little bit and that was very pretty as well.

Today I went and did some shopping, I won’t say for what because some people who might read this might be getting stuff and I want it to be a suprise. After that my friend Jianyu (Jenny) and I went to the Beijing Zoo. Actually we got there kind of late and it was a hot day so most of the animals were in their cages already or weren’t moving around. So tomorrow morning I am going to back early in the morning and see them again. After that I am heading to see the Diabolo Girls from Quidam who are back in Beijing on their break. I will have lunch with them and one of the former girls as well. Then I will go watch a performance that Mengmeng is in. After that we are supposed to go to Dinner and then Karoake, don’t worry I plan on not singing.

Lots more to report as the days go by. I’ll put more pictures up and blogs when I have time. Until then good night.