It's 7:45PM and we're all in our hotel room gettin' ready for bed. We had a busy day today that started at 11 this morning. Leaving from the hotel room we first went to, "The Temple of the Heavens." This is an old park in which every morning they do Tai Chi (hopefully we'll do this before we leave Beijing). We were told that twice a year the emperor used to visit this place and pray for a good harvest. This temple is interesting because, as you'll see when I put up some pictures, it is a 3 story temple that is circular. The circle represents the sky and the 3 stories represent the heavens, at the top, the humans, in the middle, and the earth at the bottom. Surrounding the temple is the square wall. This represents that earth as well. That was pretty much all we learned about that place (or at least what I can remember). Next, we went to "Tiananmen Square." It wasn't anything special...just a square. About the only thing that was interesting was the fact that two Chinese girls kept asking me if I spoke English, but I didn't answer because I didn't know what to do. Anyways, the last place we went to was to the "Forbidden City." Just right in front of the Tiananmen Square this place is huge. It's called the Forbidden City because no commoners were allowed anywhere near it. In fact, it has a moat around it which you'll be able to see when I put up some pictures. In the city there are 3 gates to get to the center. They're called the Tiananmen gate, that's the first one, I don't know what the second one is called, and the third is called the Meridian gate. Those who lived between the Tiananmen gate and the second one were the military peoples. Those who lived between the second and the Meridian gate were the officials, and in the middles is where the emperor lived. Within the middle is a garden that was built for, I think, the emperor's wife (I'll post a picture of that too). Now mind you, while we were looking at these places it was like 95 degrees, I was kinda miserable, but the wind did help. After the Forbidden City we had dinner which was really nice. I have no clue as to what the restaurant was called but we were served duck and other foods such as white rice with egg, sliced duck with boiled egg yoke in the middle, peppers, onions, beef, shrimp, a weird salad, and so on. I'll have pictures of that too. As for today, that was all we did. We walked a lot, took pictures, and ate. I'll have more for you all tomorrow.
