Finally had a good night of sleep! Slept 7 hrs straight and forgot where I was. Had coffee with Liz and Doug in the lobby. Just completed our final session today. Here is Maggie, one of the student emcees for the closing ceremony.

All of the dignitaries and student leaders were able to express their gratitude and share what they had learned. A student stayed up all night to complete the closing slide show. The song selected was “Time to Say Goodbye.”

Here we are presenting our gifts to Principal Shu and C.Y.

Then it was time to say goodbye to great friends. Here’s the amazing rockstar, Jessie.

This is my friend, King. Said goodbye to my student Azure, then got picked up by Dannis for another tour. Dirk & his wife and the three Finnish educators joined us on the tour.

This is Tiananmen Square. It was extremely cold here (I’m guessing in the 20s.) My ears were frozen. I was actually tempted to buy that panda beanie….

Then we entered the Forbidden City. This complex is said to have 9,999 rooms.

Again, another surreal moment. So blessed to be here.

The area is too large to cover in a few hours, so we were unable to reach the largest palace. We ended our tour at the gardens.

We got dropped off at the Dong Hua Men Night Market. This was another adventure!

I was able to split this scorpion with Doug. It was deep fried and crunchy. It also had some type of teri sauce on it. It was “OK” and definitely had that distinct insect flavor.

One of my dreams was to eat pigeon. Liz took video, so I went for the head. The meat tasted alright (yes, tastes like chicken,) but I was disappointed that the meat was so tough. It was actually difficult and messy to eat. Still, a lotta fun….

Taxi Story:
We tried to hail a cab to go back to our hotel with no luck. Every taxi that passed by had passengers. After about 20 minutes, one pulled over across the street. As the passenger was getting out of the cab, his door struck an oncoming bicyclist and cleaned him out. Katoosh! While they were arguing, we ran across the street and jumped in. We just started laughing! No one got hurt, so it was a blessing in disguise. (BTW, taxi fares are very low in China.)

A little while later, Jessie, Raj, and C.Y. took us out for dinner. It was so nice to have spent this time. Although I saw amazing things on this trip, my highlight was spending time with these wonderful friends.

This is the famous Peking Duck (Peking the ancient name of Beijing.) It was incredibly delicious! Our friends started ordering these amazing dishes and it became another one of those hundred-course dinners. And they wouldn’t let us pay for any of it.

And then it was time again to say goodbye.