Memories Jan 16th, 2015

 Thankful the time I've been able to work from home and have the boys here with me.  Yesterday was an up and down day.  They were either getting along or fighting, not a lot of in between.  We're hoping to get out this Monday and enjoy the great outdoors since we all have the day off.   

I can remember waking up this day and having a great breakfast at the hotel and the COFFEE..  Ugh I miss the coffee so much!!  so good....   Seemed like time was so slow for us these few days, a few years later the time would seem to fly.  Such a fun time this was for us.  Exploring the city and food street was a trip!  

On to the memories ... 

Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

Its 4 am and this girl is wide awake!  lol of course I am I'm sure sleep will hit me later today.  I remembered Joe found the hot pot last night so I pulled that out and grabbed the condiment cup and God bless them there was COFFEE!!! AND Creamer and sugar.  ahhhh  I'm in heaven.  I'm glad I didn't find it last night as I probably would have drank them both and would have been bumming this am.  We were going to order room service last night but the bed was calling. 

 

Not bad for instant!

There's our trip in a calendar! 

I opened the window a little this am to let some cool air in and it was pretty quiet outside. It's now about 645 am and things are starting to pick up out there as the city is starting to wake up.  They had coffee down at breakfast with real cream but I wasn't going to try it.  George said we could eat the fruit but again I wasn't prepared to try it just yet.  The food was really good and we got to try a lot of different things, along with a lot of American style foods. 

Quiet morning

Area to the right is where the breakfast is.

Half of our Travel group

Today we met some of the other families in our travel group before George arrived to take us on our tour for the day. The sun was shining strong but it was really cold and windy today. We had a great time learning a lot about the history and culture of this wonderful country that our son comes from. There were a lot of touring groups and police around Tiananmen square. And nothing was said about the history we know it for best. It reminded me a lot like DC. They even had their own changing of the guard, though I'm not sure what they were guarding other than the huge flag.  They had a group of guards that walked by as well. It's hard not to imagine how intimidating that would be back when there was more government control.  Makes you realize how lucky/blessed we are here in the states.  I can't imagine living without the freedoms we are blessed to have here!

GEORGE! and a few of our Southern Families if you couldn't tell. 

After some time we crossed under the busy street to the Forbidden City/Emperors Palace. That was pretty cool, they have a lot of those under the street crossings over there. Smart thinking since pedestrians don't usually have the right of way!  More wonderful history here and it's so big..  You can see the buildings they went through and repainted for the Olympic visitors.  It was very pretty and it's amazing how good the buildings looked for being so old.  I wish some of the buildings were more open so you could get a closer look at different items.  You couldn't even walk in the buildings you could only look through the doorway or windows.  Not like here in the states where you can at least walk inside and see things, even if you can't touch them.  Joe and I love that kind of stuff and wished we could have spent more time there.  

Believe it or not Joe got this picture (above). He is quite tall ya know!  So there are all sorts of people crowded around this huge doors that are roped off so you can't get in, they might have even had Plexiglas to block it I can't remember.  There stands my tall American husband in a crowd of packed Chinese people getting the best pictures ever!  I didn't even bother to attempt to get into the mass of people huddle in such a small opening to even look myself.  It was nuts!

On our way out I had my first squatty potty experience. Lol.  it was a trip that's for sure.  And they had these really cool trees too, again we wish we could have had more time to explore those.  Maybe next time we'll skip ahead a little.  We board the bus and headed to old town for a rickshaw ride to a local families house for lunch. -- side note for those traveling when you see a sign on a door that says 5 Star Potty GO NOW... They most likely are cleaner and have toilet paper!

LOVED this tree area on the way out.

Yes I am actually standing behind the huge pot

The rickshaw ride was really cool, and we saw a lot.  It was nice to see some pet dogs too.  Our poor driver..  We laughed about it later with the other families but we thought our guy might keel over. He had no idea what he got himself into.  We almost got out to walk at one point. lol  The group was taken by rickshaw to a private home in what is "old town" and we are served a home cooked meal. The food was so good there, and the tea is awesome.  I need to figure out how they do theirs because it's so much better than ours here!

A northern family and a southern family. 

Entrance to someone's home

Um shouldn't you put that leash on your dog!?

LOVED that tea it was so awesome! The food was good too!

We headed back to the hotel and made plans to meet in the lobby after a bit to hit food row. When you start your adoption process you pour over posts and eventually get to the point on constant monitoring, at least that's how I got.  The closer we go to travel the more I was online.  So from the start you pretty much know how the trip is set up with the tours, hotel rooms, stores, etc... It still doesn't prepare you for actually being there and seeing it first hand. Yeah a lot of the things there make my skin crawl but one can't help but take pictures of it all. lol. 

Noodles

I think this one bothers me the most.
What did those poor star fish do anyway?

Just in case you need it! ;-)

There was also a really cool area that had shops and a closed off section for pedestrians with holiday lights up.  And the huge church where at night they have line dancing outside. We did some hat shopping while out. This was a really cute kids hat.  Joe told me I should have smiled, but I didn't know he was going to get me in the picture or I would have. We also stopped into a candy store which was pretty neat. 

It's my Duck in a box. 

As bad as the food row pictures are we managed to go eat after we finished looking at the shops and lights. We learned a lot about the families we had dinner with and had another wonderful meal.  You pretty much pick a dish, or two, and then share with the table.  I like the lazy susan they had everywhere. I'd like on in our next house! 

Hot Pot

Every table needs one of these!

After dinner we hit the 7-11 on the way back to the hotel that was a trip too. Especially getting change back since we didn't know the currency.  We thought they kept our change but found out the next day the 50 cents was actually a smaller version of the $5 bill. LOL. I tried to pay for something with 50 cents the guy kind of laughed at me.  I did too once I figured it out. :-)  Joe had to get a coke just to try it out.  We did have a lot of stuff in our room fridge but I'll pass on that bill thanks!

Oh thank Heaven for 7-11

We headed back to the hotel for the night. Relaxed and got ready for our visit to the Great Wall the next day.