The Adventure Continues at Sea

Hello everybody back in the Materials Lab and Construction office. Yesterday was our last day in Beijing. I forgot to mention that at the Great Wall there was a couple; a wife and her husband that was with another tour group. The wife was in a wheel chair the whole time I had seen her. We saw them again at the Great Wall. As I was wall up the ramp to the fist tower and set of stairs, I saw the husband pushing her chair up the sidewalk. I just assumed that they would stop at the tower since that's where the stairs began. I climbed up three levels stopping at each tower to take in the view and take pictures, but mostly to rest. After an hour or so it was time to head back down to rejoin my group. On the way down I again stopped at each tower for a few minutes. As I was making my way down past the end of the first level I saw the couple I described was walking back down the first set of stairs. The husband was helping her but this woman had struggled with her husbands help up those first flights of stairs. I was was so astounded to see what she and her husband had accomplished I forgot to take a picture. It's the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. If you see the stairs(each step is about 3 feet high though some vary , and each level has hundreds of steps) you would understand.

Yesterday we checked out of our hotel and visited the "Temple of Heaven" Shrine. It's like a big park where lots of older Chinese retirees gather perform in groups. They dance, sing , play myjong,and its just a place for people to gather. Further in there is a huge circular structure that is located on the highest point in Beijing. There will plenty of camera shots of it during the Olympics.

We left the temple and had lunch and then visited a famous silk factory "Qualong Silk" I think that's how you spell it, where we were shown how silk is made and of course afterwards there were many items for sale which if you like silk and you saw something you liked this was the time to by it since it is much cheaper here. A third of the price in the States.

After that it was on to our bus for a three hour drive to our ship "Sapphire Princess" docked in the port city of Xingang. It was an amazing ride. China economy is exploding. Everywhere you see big construction projects and high rises going up everywhere as far as the eye can see, even out in the countryside. After getting lost a few times our driver finally got us to our ship where we boarded. I am typing this from the ship. This may be the last time I update the blog until I get home because the price for using the internet is so high on board ship. $.40/minute. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading about trip and I will still try to do more updates.

In the meantime I will try not to fall off the ship.