Long weekend for me! Woke up early and went with Chelsea to meet with one of the Chinese friends we made. She took us to XiangShan park, which is a large park located in Beijing. We had an interesting time riding the bus there, it was full of people. We stopped for a breakfast break and then started exploring. We bought 2 tickets at the park, one for the temple and one for the park. First we explored the temple and it was pretty neat to look at. I got a lot of pictures and we had a lot of fun taking pictures of each other throughout the day. And of course, while we were trying to take pictures at the temple, people would just stop and grab a shot of us. It's so interesting! After exploring the temple, we headed over to the park and climbed to the top of the mountain. It was SUCH A BIG MOUNTAIN! I think it took us about 90 minutes to climb to the top. I was so tired. We stopped to rest for a bit and grab some pictures and eat a little before heading back down. There were a lot of neat things to see. I'm so tired after all the climbing.

After the park, we walked around the shops in the area. I bought a few things that I thought would make good gifts for people. They had churros so I was super excited and bought some.....but they were not that great. The churro itself was crispy, but it had no cinnamon or sugar and for some reason they served it with ice cream on top and the ice cream was disgusting! I ended up eating my "churros" and throwing the ice cream away....never again hahaha. And of course, a day of exploring isn't complete without a ton of people asking to take our picture. We had so many people asking us if they could take our pictures or pose with them. I'm still not used to it. I was in a good mood today, so I said yes to most of the requests. 2 college students asked me if I would give them my QQ number. I have no idea what my number was, so I asked them for theirs and told them I would add them later. Maybe I'll have some new Chinese friends now! It was really nice to have Li Jiao along with us today. She was a huge help for getting the tickets and helping us haggle for stuff. Although I have to say after today, my head hurts. She doesn't speak very much English, so pretty much the whole day was just speaking Chinese. I'm glad I got the practice. I have to say, the people around us were definitely surprised when they heard us talking. I'm pretty sure most of them couldn't believe we were speaking Chinese. I always find it funny that when people want to take pictures, they approach us and ask us in English, or if they don't know English, they would ask Li in Chinese. It's interesting how they have this idea the foreigners can't speak Chinese.

So after a long day, we grabbed the bus and headed back to Beida. Grabbed dinner together on campus and then Li ran off to attend a lecture by a famous director and I returned back to the global village to pack up my stuff and head back to my Host family's house. What a long weekend! Now I get to start studying for the quiz I have tomorrow! It's going to be a busy night!