VISIT

The first week of October, one of my closest friends, JaLane, came to visit me in Beijing. JaLane was my next door neighbor my first year of college and then my roommate the second year.  We've stayed friends now for 18 years and I love her to death along with the rest of the ladies I lived with and got to know those first two years of school. While JaLane was here I took her to the touristy sights - Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Hutongs, etc... and we had such a great time. Some of the places we went to I had been to before but this time around there was so much more going on.  The weather was great and so there were more locals in the parks exercising, singing, and dancing and there were several performances we got to view as well which was fantastic.  We went to the bell and drum towers and got to participate in and learn about the traditional Chinese tea ceremony and after our hutong tour we wasted no time looking in fun shops and spending money on super cute embroidered shoes!  JaLane and I also went to the Lao She teahouse where we got to see several traditional performances of  musical story telling, comedy, Chinese opera, etc... The magician they had was not very impressive and the two brothers doing the comedy routine took too much time but I loved the performer who demonstrated the tradtional face changing.  I made sure that my friend got plenty of shopping in and got to try some yummy food as well although she didn't seem to care for the duck. We went to a FABULOUS brunch at The Westin hotel and ate lots of potato wires! I was really grateful to have another friend come visit me here in Beijing! Enjoy the photos!