My phone started freezing and the app errored out, which means I probably attached too many pictures. I will break this post up into multiple parts so I can attach pictures worth seeing. I have a lot pics but I will have to make an album when I get back.
Here are the rest of the pics from the Olympic Park. It's a stadium and a hotel shaped like a dragon.
Here is another pic from the zoo that I forgot to include.
After the Olympic Park, we stopped at Dr. Tea. We had the opportunity to sample four different teas and learn about the culture of tea in China. Mitchum (I hope your reading my blog), you would have loved this place.
We tried four teas: jasmine, oolong, pu er, and fruit.
1. Jasmine - nice smell and very sweet taste. Jasmine is part of the green tea family.
2. Oolong - aka black dragon had a very soothing feel but not too much taste. When drinking oolong, you do three things first: 1) smell it, 2) look at the color, and 3) slurp it three times: first for happiness, second for health, and third for long life. Oolong is a combination of black and green tea.
3. Pu Er - not so good in taste, but a lot of people drink it for the health benefits. Usually for tea leaves, the younger the better. For pu er, the older the better. We tried pu er that was 18 years old. Also, tea leaves grow in bushes, but pu er grows in trees. Pu er does not contain caffeine.
4. Fruit - this had the sweetest taste and was the best one by far. It has natural sugar from the fruit and it does not contain caffeine.
The young lady teaching us about teas was named Yolanda, which was her English name. She showed us how to drink from the smaller tea cups when sampling teas. She questioned if we knew the most important part of tea, which is the temperature of the water. She brought a little glass boy and poured water on him. If the temperature was hot enough, the little boy peed out the water. Yolanda referred to him as the "pee-pee boy." It was the funniest thing ever. She also showed is a tea cup that originally had a dragon on it. When the temperature of the water is warm enough, the dragon turns into the Great Wall of China. I purchased the fruit tea and dragon tea cup, and I received the pee-pee boy for free. The pics are below.