and bears, oh my!

So China was awesome!  I started in Hong Kong, and it was amazing.  One of my friends on the ship, her parents are from Taiwan and her grandfather fly to Hong Kong for the day.  Her cousin also lives in Hong Kong so we hung out with them and they took us around.  It was a lot of fun.  We ate good food, walked around the city, went to Hong Kong Island and all over.  Then the next day I got up early and traveled to Beijing with semester at sea.  We saw the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, Tienanmen's Square, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Beijing Zoo which has Giant Pandas, and the Olympic Stadiums.  Then we traveled to Shanghai.  The last day in China I went to Suzhou (which is a little city outside of Shanghai) with semester at sea and saw three gardens, the university there, and we went for a ride on the canal.  It was very beautiful, and a little cold.  The cold weather, and the shock from going from sweating instantly when walking outdoors, to needing hats and gloves made me sick.  Stuffy nose and all that.  It is getting better so that is good at least!

I think that it is important to note that the Great Wall is basically just stairs.  No one told me that.  In fact to get to the part that is not stairs you have to climb a mountain of stairs to get to it.  Needless to say I did not make it to that part, cause once you got to the "top" of the section we were at, there were more stairs.  So when some one says they climbed the Great wall, believe you me, they climbed that Great Wall... of stairs.

Tomorrow we will be in Japan.  I am very excited.  It should be amazing, and here is why.

Monday April 6: dock in Kobe, explore the city
Tuesday April 7: go to Kyoto
Wednesday April 8: Tokyo
Thursday April 9: Tokyo
Friday April 10: leaving on the ship from Yokohama

While in Tokyo we are going to go to hot springs and a baseball game and it is going to be awesome.  MY friend's mom studied in Japan and stayed with a family, and we are staying with that family, so we are doing a home-stay, which should be amazing.  She is going to teach us how to use the subway system and help us get baseball tickets and take us around and tell us what we should see.  It is a once in a life time opportunity that I happened to stumble into yesterday afternoon.  How lucky am I?!?  Well classes and such... Ciao!