More Beijing Sites

Yesterday, we cruised around Beijing a little, visiting the Lama Temple and Bell and Drum towers.  The Lama Temple, for those of you who don't know, is a Tibetan Buddhist temple in Bejing that houses a 26 meter tall white Sandalwood temple of the Maitreya Buddha.  Yes, 26 meters, or, for you Americans, 85 feet.  The most unbelievable part, he is carved from a single Sandalwood.  Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the building, however I do have the power of internet.  So, a picture not of my taking:

 Freaking awesome, I know.

Me being a little bit of language nerd, I was really excited to see so many languages that I could not read on one sign:

 The furthest left is Mongolian, then Tibetan, Chinese, and the Arabic script.  The people of Xinjiang use the Arabic alphabet:

 Xinjiang will be important a little later in the day as well.

The drum and bell towers were, cool, but at that point all of us were dead, so we didn't go in, just took pictures outside and bartered for hats.

 

The first picture is the drum tower, the second the bell.  Interesting fact that roommate told me: in ancient China they of course didn't have clocks, so the bell was rung twice a day (in the morning and in the evening) and could be heard all through out Beijing.  

The food yesterday was especially interesting.  We had a Xinjiang dish that was super tasty, and also super giant:

I think the meat was chicken (I often don't know what meat I'm eating, but I really don't care, so know need to worry) and their were big pieces of ginger root and potato, green peppers, onions, hot peppers, etc.  Really, really super tasty.  We dipped giant noodles into the sauce and slurped those up as well.  But this was not the most interesting dish of the night.  This was:

Yum, chicken hearts.  Little bit chewy, but quite tasty.  Yay China.

Just a small update from today (6/17), we can see blue sky.  Praise Buddha, Allah, and the Food Gods of China:

Today is also the day where I signed the language pledge.  I will not be allowed to speak English for the next two months....what have I gotten myself into?