Hello y'all!

We are safe and sound at Dylan's parents. Amazingly, in the week between us deciding to leave for sure/booking the ticket and us leaving Japan, we got everything wrapped up: apartment settled, bills paid, ourselves packed, appropriate things shipped here, and even had enough time to see friends and say goodbye.

Since we're back now, I'm thinking that my entries will stop for a while. At least until we get up to something remotely interesting. But, seeing as how we are who we are, that shouldn't take too long. Just so you know, don't be expecting much for the next couple of months.

And then we went to Beijing. Man, is that place intense! The entire population of Canada is 30 million people and, in Beijing alone, there are 17 million. Since we were only there for such a short period of time, we spent all of our time in the tourist sections of town. I doubt we got an authentic view of the city, but we definitely got our share of dealing with pullers/pushers. It seems like absolutely absolutely everyone was trying to sell us something. Turns out being white makes you an easy target. "Hello! Where are you going? Let's go!"

So, you know how Beijing hosted the Olympics last year? They have this huge section a couple of blocks big devoted to buildings they built for it. That has been sitting empty since. They used the Birds Nest for soccer sometimes, but for the most part, it is just there for tourist to come and take pictures of the pretty lights on the building. The roads are all still blocked off. Apparently, the plan is to convert some of the buildings into shopping centers. It completely breaks my brain to think of the millions of dollars that were spent, and now it sits there are a giant tourist trap.

Other than that, we went to the Great Wall. Aptly names, I might say. Went to the Forbidden City. Saw Tian'anmen Square. As I said, very touristy things, but quite neat. To be honest, I was thrilled most of the time. I have wanted to go to China for so long and it was crazy to actually get to be there.