We Made it to Beijing

Nihao!

After many many many hours of flying, we made it to Beijing! It was very late in the evening when we finally trudged into our hotel room. I hadn't slept at all on any of the flights, so I was craving a bed--though I think at that point, the any old flat surface to stretch out on would have felt like a Sleep Number. I probably could have slept on a table with a sheet laid across it which, incidentally, is exactly what Chinese hotel beds feel like.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Downtown Beijing, which was very nice. The building was sandwiched in amongst the other downtown structures, making it difficult to distinguish from every other building at first glance. But the inside revealed an elegant comfort. Our room was pretty nice, too.

One of my favorite quirky things about the room was the "window." Look closely, and one finds a narrow lit hall on the other side of the glass, with a picture of foliage at the back. We did have a real window in our room, though. Only this one gave a great view of the toilet from the room. Just what every one needs, right?

After about 3 hours of sleep, we got to hop down to the breakfast buffet for a delicious selection of Chinese and American foods, like tea boiled eggs and bean curd soup. Yum. (I mostly ate toast.)



Then, we met up with our tour group and guide. There were about 40 people made up of families adopting through CCAI (the adoption agency) staying in the hotel. Our tour group consisted of about 20 of them.

First thing, they took us in the tour bus to an older, more traditional area of town. Our guides wanted us to see what a neighborhood of homes and courtyards look like in order to understand more about Chinese culture. We got to ride around in rickshaws for this.

Mom and Dad waiting for the ride to begin.

We visited one courtyard home that was open to tours. The family had one part of the house to live in, and the other part set up with traditional furniture and interesting decorating ideas, like tinsel hanging from the ceiling corners. I saw these kinds of odd displays all over Beijing. Beautifully carved wooden furniture next to a 15 foot permanent sign saying "welcome" using the shiny tinsel garlands you might wrap around a Christmas tree.

We spent some time walking around the neighborhood, riding in the rickshaws, and snapping a few pictures before getting back on the bus.

We stopped at a silk mall, where they showed us the process of taking the threads from the silk worm cocoon. We ate lunch at a restaurant. We got on and off the bus a bunch of times.

In the afternoon, we went to Tianenmen Square. This square can hold one million people standing side-by-side at one time, and is the largest square in the world. (I think they are referring to Chinese people only when they say this, though, because we Americans prefer our personal space.)

Directly across from the square is the Forbidden City--a palace area that was once closed off to the world, but now hosts a billion-zillion visitors every day. Here, we met up with our old buddy from home, Daryl, who has been living in China for nearly 10 years.

The Forbidden City was a maze of ancient trees and Chinese architecture. It was so large, we could have spent days wandering around and not have been able to see it all.







By nightfall, we'd had a packed day of sight-seeing and walking. We had another full day of touring again the next day. (I'm now sitting in my hotel room in Zhengzhou 2 days later, still sore and tired from the rush.)

Day two coming up...