Beijing Part 2 (Finally): Fulbright Orientation

Sorry it took sooooooooo long for me to post this! We went to Shenzhen (pronounced shunjun) for district conference so I was gone for the weekend. We also went to the Guangdong Museum and that was way cool too. I will blog about all this soon!  Now to Beijing. After we were done with the Great Wall on Saturday, we went to church on Sunday(and Dad met 4 of his former students and Mom saw her old Chinese teacher! Small world) and then we went to the welcome dinner at the Fat Duck, the restaurant in the hotel that we stayed in. We met the other Fulbrighters and their families at the dinner. There were three other kids at the orientation and while the Fulbrighters were at meetings, we did fun stuff like go to the aquarium, have a PROFESSIONAL mask painter teach us how to paint opera masks( this guy has gone big places and won money with these masks!) and go the park, just to name a few. Thank you Ms. Yang( the lady who did this for us) for everything! The hotel we stayed in was called the Renaissance Hotel and it was very fancy! It had a swimming pool on the top floor, which all the kids would drag their parents to ( including us!) and swim together every night. We had fun together! There was also a WONDERFUL breakfast buffet every morning, and a "smoothie guy" as we called him. He made smoothies for you out of fruit and yogurt. They were so yummy! We had lots of fun that week, and we will miss the other Fulbright people. It was so fun to get to know them! And now for the pictures...

The view from our hotel room on the 19th floor at night.

The building across from our hotel had tons of garbage its roof!

This shark at the aquarium was so big! And there were 2 of them! It was
about as long as I am tall!

These jellyfish had a light behind them that changed colors so it looked
like they changed colors.

The drum ceremony in the drum tower that we went to see.
It was really loud!

Me "holding" a drum! :)

Dad and Tia in a rickshaw, a little carriage type thing that is
pulled by a bicycle. 

These girls were supposed to be taking care of the business, but they were
 all on their phones! Typical teenagers.

These fish at the park knew we were going to feed them!



Well that was our trip to Beijing. I will be back with our trip to Shenzhen
soon...