Sept 9th

Today we visited the Temple/Mansion/Grave Yard of Confucius. The whole complex was quite large and beautiful with many trees dotting each courtyard. We had a tour guide with us who knew a lot about the place, but was quite bossy and a bit annoying at times when you wanted to lag back and take a picture or look a little bit longer at something. Oh well, we got to see most everything there even if it was at a fairly rapid pace. It would have been nice to stop and sketch a little.
The Temple and Mansion were fairly close to one another while the Grave Yard was quite far away. We were told that at the Temple only boys were taught about the 6 skills of a gentlemen. I can't remember all of them off the top of my head, but a few are archery, poetry, chess (I think), and 3 others. I luckily was able to snag a quick video of our tour guide talking about theses skills so if I decide I really need to know it for some reason (jeopardy) I can review the tape.
Speaking of Confucius the 'last name' of this family line is something sounding like "Cong". I only heard it over and over again that day and felt ashamed to ask how to spell it in English, but that is besides the point. One of the Chinese students from the University is a descendant of Confucius having the 'last name' of "Cong" (I use 'last name' in single quotes only because the Chinese last name comes first and they call it their 'first name' all very confusing of course).
After the speed walk tour of Confucius's place of work and his resting place we had lunch at what we were told was a very good restaurant that many Chinese government officials would eat there when they visited the Confucius Compound.
The lunch was fantastic, it seemed quite similar to what we normally eat at a Chinese restaurant in the states. Or, that is what it tasted like to me. All the meat cuts were delicious and there was fresh cut watermelon (which is served almost everywhere here (probably the safest fruit to eat or something)). Soon we had fed our hunger and were off to our next destination Mt. Taian.
On the bus we found out the original plan was to allow us to start half way up Mt. Taian and hike the rest of the way up. Which was supposedly not that bad a 2-3 hour hike and most of it were stairs, better then the stairs we found at the great wall we were assured. Though we arrived so late to Mt. Taian that we all had to do the 2nd option which was ride a Gondola up to the top. This is what I was planning to do in the first place to save my feet from more blisters.
When we hopped into gondolas I was partnered up with our bus driver, jimmy (a student from the university and photographer documenting us like wild animals), and one of the tour guide girls from the school. I jumped in first and scooted all the way over expecting to squeeze in all 6 people who were left, but we decide to split up 4 and 2. The whole ride up I didn't understand any of their Chinese, but thats to be expected. I'm sure they were talking about how I was off balancing the gondola and how I would be at fault when we plumeted to the earth, because they moved as far away from me as possible and pointed at me.
The top of the mountain was very awesome. You could almost see forever if it wasn't for the smog or mist as I like to call it. I bought a headband, or what I thought was a headband, at the bottem of the mountain. I learned later, much later that you were supposed to tie it to some tree at the top, but I was back at the bottem of the Mt. at this point. People also write stuff on locks and attach it to a metal fence around a statue thats at the tip top. So we fooled around for a long time on the top of China before coming down.
All and all was a good day. The sight we saw were definitely worth seeing and I got some awesome pictures. More coming soon. (sorry for the slow updates)