China...Finally

Hey, so sorry this is so late, It is exam time and things are a little nuts again (like most times on board). I need something to distract me from writing other essays so I thought it was a good idea to finally write about my amazing time in China.
First off, I met up with Katie in Beijing, it was late because my plane came in at midnight, but we stayed up and talked for a while. It was so great to see her, a shot of family in the middle of the trip was really nice.
She had everything figured out with the tour guides and what not which was amazing. The entire time we had our own guide and driver who took us anywhere we wanted to go. We visited Tienenman square, which was huge and had a lot of under cover police, ready to take down anyone with a "free Tibet" shirt. Right across from it is the Forbidden City, which was amazingly beautiful, you could see exactly where Mulan fought the Huns in the final scene of the Disney classic. It was crazy to think that such a massive area with such amazing architecture was only for a few people to see. It was interesting how important it was that things be only for the Emperor, like the dragon as decoration or an entire city, and it seemed like the punishment for doing anything the emperor didn't like, was death, and not only that he would kill 9 generations of your family. That was back in the day of course, but still, pretty intense. We also visited the Temple of Heaven which was one of my favorite sites, because it was just so amazingly designed, it was a circle but it was really cool. We were also introduced to amazing food. We kept on saying that no one mentions how fantastic the food is, but literally everything we ate was unbelievable, even though most of the time we didn't know what it was. Also they just kept bringing us food, we would be just finishing up and then two new plates of food would be brought out, it was nuts. The Great Wall was, well great. It is crazy to think that something so big was built up on top of a mountain, I can't imagine being on top while thousands of warriors are trying to attack it, We flew to Xi'an and saw the Terra-cotta Warriors, which was fantastic, there were so many of them, and each of them with a different face, modeled after the artists who made them. We went to the Big White Goose Pagoda, where BUddhism was brought to China, it was surrounded by gorgeous gardens that had caged birds in the trees, which we found peculiar. We also went to Shanghai,which was our favorite city, it was like New York, only 10 times bigger and if you put LED lights on the outside of all the buildings that created a massive light show every night. It was a great place to see, It was here that we had our most interesting dish, we had pizza, with tuna and mayonnaise on it. We had to try it, expecting it to be horrible, but it was actually quite good, maybe we were just hungry. I was sad when I had to leave Katie at the dock, I had had such an amazing time with her. One of our favorite things was all the planned shops we went to. In every city they would take us to a place to see how something was made. Be it pearls, Terra-cotta warriors, Cloisonné, or jade, it seemed like they would run us through a work shop and then drop us in the gift shop, Americans without a doubt, always exit through the gift shop. We thought is was funny, and things even came with an official government approved souvenir card. We also had a great time looking at all of the attempts at English on signs, it was funny, some of them actually inappropriate, by mistake of course, but still funny. I loved traveling with Katie, it was great to be with someone who knows me better then three months. Our family is awesome because no matter how long or far we go, we always have the same sense of humor and when we find each other, where ever it may be in the world it is like no time had passed at all. This trip made me appreciate that much more than ever before, my family rocks. Right now I am on my way to Hawaii, I will land in Hilo tomorrow. I am sure that I missed a lot of stuff, so Katie if you want to add anything please do. Till next time, Take care, and make it count.