Summer Palace

Well it was another whirlwind day of being a tourist. Now I know why the Chinese 
people are so thin. Everything around here is huge and you have to walk miles to 
get to them. 
 
My first stop was the Summer Palace, which is kind of like the Camp David for 
Chairman Mao only ten times larger and open to the public. It was really 
beautiful. And if any of you were either a) getting tired of my emails (I know 
there's a few of you out there!) or b) just plain gettuing tired of me, well.... 
I'm going to be around for 100 years! Buddha says that those who climb the 
Longevity Hill, which let me tell you was quite a hill, will have longevity and 
live for 100 years. Woo Hoo!! Also, while I was there, I got to meet the Chinese 
3 Stooges (pictured) Actually, if they moniter the email the way the rumors say, 
I may not be be me tomorrow! 
 
Next stop was two really nice parks (Beijing has many huge parks within the 
city) and many of them have really cool pagodas and buildings with these huge 
Buddha's in them. Really wild. 
 
Then my next stop was on to the Olympic Stadium/park area where they held the 
2008 Olympics (you remember, where Michael Phelps got his 8 gold medals... of 
course, that was before the bong incident!). If you remember watching it, the 
stadium was called the "Bird's Nest"since it was architected to look like a huge 
nest. Really cool during the day and especially at night whenit was lit up. 
 
But then my last and final stop is where I hit the mother lode. Just visualize 
the state fairs where they fry up all that crazy stuff, but here, they ain't 
frying twinkies or bacon or butter or anything normal like that... Nooooo... how 
about fried scorpians, crickets, snakes and silk worms... and you know my motto, 
"when in Rome...", so of course I had to try something... I won't tell you which 
I ate, I'll just leave it at... It tastes like chicken!" LOL. 
 
Well I hope you are all holding down reality! Take care. 
 
Jeff