我的长城探险 (My Great Wall Adventure)

Hello all! I hope this posting finds everyone well. Believe it or not, within 5 hours of arriving in Beijing yesterday morning, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet my good friend, Fei Guo to trek out to the Ba-da-ling (八达岭) portion of the Great Wall. Fei's family currently lives in Beijing and he is working on his PhD at the University of Delaware. As you can see from these pictures, we had great fun!

这是我

This is Me

这是非
This is Fei

Amazingly, as Fei and I were climbing the Great Wall, who did we run into? None other than Daniel, the leader of our San Francisco->Los Angeles->Beijing odyssey. Sure, you could say we were in the same city so it was bound to happen . . . but considering it is a city with 20 million or so people and various Great Wall access points, it was quite exciting to run into him again!
After our expedition to the Great Wall, Fei and I explored the sites around the Tian'anmen Square (天安门广场）. Including some of the new architectural marvels completed in time for the Olympics next month. This building (known affectionately by locals as "the Egg") is a new opera hall, fitting of a world-class city of this magnitude. The architectural diversity of the city is truly amazing (considering the 600+ year old Forbidden City is opposite the Egg on the other side of the street . . .

More to come - so stay tuned=-)