Thursday was our last day for exploring Beijing. Unfortunately James fell ill and decided to stay at the hotel for rest. Kevin had a brief meeting across town with an international student recruiting agency for NKU. So after an early stop at a nearby Starbucks I headed out alone for the Temple of Heaven, which was only about a twenty minute walk south of our hotel. Spread out over a beautiful inner-city park were the Hall of Prayer, the Imperial Vault and a Circular Mound Alter. A few too many tourists for me but the architecture was spectacular and the grounds beautiful. I walked around for nearly ninety minutes, visiting all the main attractions and then leaving the main path for the more quiet gardens on the periphery. A very pleasant morning. On the way home I passed a guy flying a kite on an overpass. He wanted me to buy a kite, I suspect, but I only wanted the photograph.

Kevin and I met up in the early afternoon, worked on INF 128 a little, and then headed out to the Forbidden City. We walked from our hotel about half an hour to Tiananmen Square, which is the large people's plaza, which sits outside the Outer Court, which sits south of the Inner Court. There are lots of very elaborate (and beautiful) gates to mark your progress. Walking the entire stretch you travel from a massive public meeting space to a massive private forbidden space. And then you have an ice cream. It all makes sense. Inspiring, but refreshing, too. The Forbidden City was amazingly quite accommodating to tourists, though you won't find a Starbucks there anymore. At the north end of the property lies Jingshan Hill, a man-made mound of dirt that offers an awesome view of the center of the world.

We left the Forbidden City around rush hour, and rather than struggle with crowded public transportation or stand-still taxis, we decided to walk home. It was a great walk but long and exhausting. As per usual it was hot and muggy and though I was born in the year of the chicken, I was sweating like someone who was born in the year of the pig. I guess I walked about 15 miles Thursday.

James was still not feeling well, so Kevin and I took a taxi to a recommended Mongollian Hot Pot restaurant south of the hotel. Like a fondue, thin slices of beef and mutton and pieces of vegetable are dropped briefly into a pot of boiling seasoned broth and then dipped in a brown sauce. This may be my new favorite Chinese food.

We left the hotel at 5 AM Friday, beginning what was to be a twenty-six-hour day of travel, including a 6-hour layover in SEA. I didn't think you could get 26 hours in a day but we arrived at CVG around 7 PM, also on Friday. It's quite disorienting, really. We had been experiencing life in the future as Beijing was 12 hours ahead of Cincinnati. While I was enjoying a beer at the end of the day, my NKU colleagues were only beginning to start the same day. From that perspective I could easily forecast that my day would be more fun than their's. The trip back to KY not only brought us back to the same time eventually, but somewhere over the Pacific we were thrust into the past. Landing in Seattle we were suddenly three hours behind our colleagues. Where does the time go?

*Thanks to Miranda for this last photo at the Great Wall.