A Full Friday!

What a great day! We had a VERY good nights sleep - thank goodness!! We are sooo glad that we came to China a few days early to get acclimated here. We are feeling pretty normal - finally! Our guide, Mary, has told us sooo many interesting things about chinese people - very fascinating.

Here's what we did today: We were picked up at 8am and we thought that we were going to go to McDonalds but the driver pulled up to KFC for breakfast - we weren't aware that they served breakfast but they did! However, they were out of egg! So, the boys had a chicken sandwich(which had corn, peas & carrots in it) and hashbrowns - we just had our Special K cereal bars (it was a very good thing we brought some food with us - Cheri: you better bring 1 suitcase full of food -i wish we had more!!) We hope to go to a market soon... Then we were off into the traffic to go to The Great Wall. On the way there i realized that i forgot to lock our safe!!!! - i was sick to my stomach, but Mary immediately called the hotel and the manager closed the safe for us and everything was okay(but we weren't sure until we returned at 4:30 this afternoon) On the way to the Wall we passed an abandoned Disneyland - apparently the developer ran out of $$$. We were hoping to go to the Wall at Mutianyu but ended up at the Badaling section (we were okay with that because it was closer) We took a little rollercoaster type of car up a small section on the back side of the wall - this was quite an experience! Taylor wanted to ride with me, but they put him by himself - i had to YELL at them NO NO!!! and they took him out and SHOVED us into the next car - whew! You should have seen Taylor's face - sheer panic. It turned out to be a very safe little jaunt but we had NO idea of what to expect. We walked up most of the wall - at one point there was a huge people jam - They were totally squishing each other and shoving to go through this little doorway - Mary ended up taking us a different and much safer way:) We climbed up for aways and it was beautiful! We then walked down to the roller coaster for a slow ride down - it was fun:) We bought a few things here... We then jumped back in the bus to head back to Beijing but the rode was broken where we needed to turn so we had to take a long cut:) Mary and Mr.Wang were hungry and wanted chinese food for lunch - we luckily had PB & J and snacks that we ate. We are not adventurous! We feel kinda bad - last night we ordered Hamburger, spaghetti etc. for dinner and with it came a cream of vegetable soup but it tasted like chalk and smelled like milk, then came a salad (which we can't eat fresh veggies) then our meal (which does not taste like it is supposed to) then dessert that wasn't too tasty either - we felt REALLY bad not eating much and the waitress hovers over the table to make sure everything is okay -she probably thinks badly of us now:( Anyway, we went to a Friendship Store (i think they take all of the tourist there) int he front of the store there was tons of awesome things to buy but we want to wait until we get to Guangzhou. In the back is the chinese restaurant where Mary and Mr.Wang ate. We wondered around and also visited a Cloisonne factory (very small and mostly a demonstration of how they hand make the vases) - very cool to see! Then we were back into the traffic and headed to MC DONALDS!!! Yeah!!! After the stressfulness of ordering what we wanted we got everything okay and it was delicious!!! We were then off to the Lama Temple and learned alot about Buddhas, the Dahli Lama etc. - very interesting stuff... At all of these places that we have visited they all have a threshold that you have to step over to stop the evil spirits (b/c evil spirits can only go straight) In some places you have to walk around a wall too b/c the evil spirits cannot turn and they don't want them to enter. They have gods for everything - mountains, rivers, heaven, earth, sky etc...

Anyway, we ran into an adoption group from Holt. I walked up to a man and asked him where he was from and he said Southern CA. I told him that we were getting our daughter on Monday in Chongqing - he siad that they were getting their son there on Monday too! They adopted a daughter from Chongqing 2 years ago! We hope to run into them again:)

I am not sure if i will have time to post tomorrow - we will go on a Hutong Tour, visit the silk alley and then to the airport to go to Chongqing. We arrive in Chongqing at 7pm.

I hope the website is working okay - i am not able to see it and can only post and put pics on through flickr - so be sure to click on the flickr link to the right of the page below our family pic:) I have been getting the comments that have been posted b/c it goes to my email too:) Thank you for your well wishes!!!