Thursday was equally hectic! We're starting to feel achey, similar to the London Legs!

The morning we had another panic - we tried to take out some money from the local ATM machine, only to be told by an official in the post office that our mastercards wouldn't work internationally - imagine the horror! Luckily, we got our wires crossed, and you could only use those ATMs if you had a Chinese post office account, so we nipped across the road to a shopping centre to use an independant hole in the wall.

We've already met quite a few people here - Claire is determined to talk to anyone and everyone. There was a South African lone traveller in our hostel who told us he was planning to travel from China using the train network up through Siberia and towards Russia, which we heard is incredibly dangerous, and not advisable for people on their own. Mind you he did look pretty big and we wouldn't have messed with him so I'm sure he'll be fine. We met another man called Hans Han (yes) who told us all about Peking Opera too. It's a Beijing speciality show, but not very accessible to foreigners as there is no translation during the show, and the singing is quite shrill, so we decided to go to a Kung Fu show later in the week instead.

Thursday morning we went and made our brothers jealous by visiting the Olympic park. It was bizarre to be stood in front of such an iconic place, which had been all over the news and TV the past year or so. And the place was vast! We have already noticed that everything in China is symbolic, from the roof colour to the stones in front of the doors, so to see lamposts in certain number lines and the symmetry of the layout of the park was just so breathtaking. We could even go inside the Birds' Nest, for a grand total of just 25 Yuan (2.50 pounds) and stand in both the steps and in the actual stadium centre where they performed the opening ceremony. Breathtaking! We saw the outside of the water cube too, but a swimming pool is a swimming pool, so we headed back to the metro station to go see the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon.

It was another park, this time consisting of more lone temples (China isn't particularly religious, but they do love their Buddist statues). The place was surrounded by a huge 10ft wall, which we accidentally walked the wrong (long) way around to find the entrance, but eventually we got in. We've also noticed in China there are no pigeons (haha) and hardly any dogs! The dogs they do have are tiny and very fluffy, so not very tasty we imagine. We didn't lose each other this time, but we got really tired from walking around. Near the exit, we walked straight into a large paved area where people were just dancing to a stereo! It's amazing how little self-consciousness Chinese people have; if they want to dance, they DANCE! We got roped into having a bit of a boogie which was both brilliant and very embarrassing, we drew a lot of attention anyway. Either way, getting involved in the culture and way Chinese people do their thing is exactly why we wanted to come to China, so as embarrassing as it was, we'll never forget it.

Disaster struck when we got back to the hostel - Claire dropped her camera in the toilet! hahahah! No idea HOW it happened, but we fished it out, blew it a bit, gave it a wipe, and by morning it was working perfectly again, miracle!

That night, we met up with Will - a friend of Claire's who'd gone out to Beijing after 6th form at Kings and had ended up staying out there for a year and a half. He took us to the local, poorer side of Beijing for the authentic food. Alleyways in China are called 'hutongs', and you rarely see a white face anywhere here. If it had just been the two of us we probably wouldn't have been brave enough to go, but with Will's confidence and rather cool splashes of Chinese conversation here and there it was wicked. We went into a little backstreet cafe and he ordered something without telling us what it was..... but it ended up being just veggies and rice, for less than 2 quid each, for a big meal, unbelievable! We chatted about China and our experience so far, his life in Beijing and the differences back home. It was really nice to chat to another English person with the same sense of humour, if not a little surreal! Made us look forward to meeting our group of people on Friday!