China... but more to come later

Finally, I get to blog about my trip to China! It has been long but so much fun, and definitely a once in a lifetime experience. So my golf team gets to go on international trip every four years and that is why we are in China. Sixteen travelers, fifteen days, twelve golf balls, eleven golf bags, ten women, nine different modes of transportation (Plane, train, charter bus, scooter taxi, bike taxi, boat ferry, subway, walking, and taxi), six rounds of golf, five cities, four different roommates, three Chinese speakers, two great coaches, and one awesome trip.

We started our trip in the out skirts of Beijing at Pine Valley Resort and Golf. The CEO of Red Bull I guess owns this vast property. It is basically his play ground, we were the only guests in this huge palace. We rode bikes around the place and through the golf course it was so much fun. The golf course was beautiful, but the smog is what shocked me the most in Beijing. I played four holes before the smog made it hard for me to take a deep breathe. We each had our own individual caddie for each round and my caddy at Pine Valley was awesome. Her English wasn't very good, but her golf lingo was. She only went to school tell 7th grade and that was the case with all of my caddies. I never saw a male caddy throughout my whole trip, which was interesting. We then spent a couple of days in the city of Beijing. We climbed the GREAT WALL! Not just to one tower, but eight of them. We got to the third tower and we agreed at least I think to hike two more towers. Well we sort of got seprated especially since I took more stops than normal and when I finally got the 5th tower they weren't there and I could see in the distance they had kept going. Well I couldn't just stop, I had to keep going too. I'm not kidding 7 towers later there was a dead end...finally! I'm thinking it was at least a couple of miles. Also, I thought the Great Wall consisted more of ramps. This is not the case... it was all stairs, some stairs I'm not kidding felt like a yard high. It was a great stair master workout!

THE FORBIDDEN CITY. A great site to see, and with so many people! It was huge! We went to Zhong Shan Park which gates lead into the Forbidden City. We went here because in 1971 President Pakard and ...

We went to an acrobat show, which the Chinese seem to be really into acrobats. We went shopping at this place called the silk market which is a six level shopping complex where you haggle basically. It was so much fun to watch and try and do yourself. We celebrated our coaches birthday too! Happy Birthday Coach. We then took an overnight train ride to Xi'an and all I can say is WOW!! Basically, each cabin was 3 yards wides and 6 stacked beds inside one cabin and NO room. We also had eleven golf bags!! The people in the train were so nice and accommodating, but I have no idea how we fit everything. It was an absolute miracle! After an unforgettable twelve hour train ride, we arrived in Xi'an.