Weekend

So yesterday, Sunday, we went to the Summer Palace and also to the Old Summer Palace, which lay in ruin. They were both very cool and also very beautiful.The Summer Palace land area is HUGE, most of it is taken up by a lake though. We had free time to explore, most people went on boat rides, but me and some Aussie climbed up this huge hill over looking the area and also over much of Beijing. The views were amazing of course, as they always are. There was a buddhist temple at the top once again, this one was bigger than the ones I had seen before and the views were just great. It was so hot though! After that day of long travels we went to the Peking Opera! It was a neat experience, I was happy we got to go. The costumes are just amazing! There seemed to be a lot more focus on the instrumental music as telling the story, along with the elaborate costumes. I didn't know someone could get their voice so high....

Today we had the day off! So I went to Wal-Mart and bought a couple things, then headed off to Starbucks, and grabbed McDonalds for lunch (It was my first time). So I basically had the most American day ever, haha. People say, "Oh, you shouldn't have McDonalds while abroad! You miss out on the culture!" Well, look here buddy, I am living here for over 7 weeks, I am (and have been) getting plenty of cultural meals, so if I want to get McDonalds once a week or so then I will. Haha. We went to a talk show for CCTV in the evening. That was really cool. The host is well known, we got to go in this guarded enterance and then they gave us dinner in a type of green room. The show was about Volunteering, mainly Olympic Volunteering, one of the guests was the VP of the Volunteering Committee or something. There were over 1 million applications to be Olympic Volunteers, and they only needed about 70,000. 2,000 of them are international volunteers, so I am VERY, VERY lucky to be here. Being a part of the show made me see that even more than I had before.

Tomorrow our Olympic News Serive training starts, I am pretty excited. It will be a long day though, then again on Wednesday, I am just excited to get started and have some questions answered! I am very tired I hope I got everything across that I wanted to!

More to come!