Victoria's blog

Saturday, April 18
It’s only the afternoon of day three and we have already seen so much. We woke up at 4 o’clock this morning to go to the flag raising at Tiananmen Square and it was unreal. First off, we were easily the only Americans in the entire place and everyone was either staring or taking pictures of us wherever we turned. Not only that, but seeing the patriotism of the people of China was amazing, they were all so excited about the ceremony and what it stood for. After the ceremony we walked back to the hotel and we took a really interesting detour through this village that we assumed was built for the Olympics, but is completely empty, there was not a single store on the entire street. As I was walking through it I kept thinking to myself ‘who do they think they’re kidding?’ because every couple of stores there were big screens blocking the ally ways. The screens were obviously trying to hide the poverty of the country and pretend like everywhere was as glamorous as the streets they built up for the Olympics, but it really just looked ridiculous. After we got back to the hotel and had breakfast we went to the Summer Palace which was beautiful. Li Jun gave us some back round on Sixi, who was the empress that built and lived in the Summer Palace. The place was absolutely enormous, with beautiful architecture, landscape, and panoramic views of the man-made lake Sixi had dug when she made the Palace. We are now on our way to lunch and then Tiananmen Square and I can’t wait to learn more about the square. It was amazing just seeing the outside of Tiananmen Square this morning so actually going into the square and learning about its history should be great.