December 1, more reasonable time!!  8:30PM

My, this internet is S L O W!!!  But, at least it is something.  I suppose we will have internet when we go to Henan province tomorrow.  Hopefully it will be faster. 

We decided to get up around 5:30, shower and go to breakfast at 6.  The breakfast buffet at the hotel was amazing.  They had about anything you can imagine on it.  Oh, there was the usual scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, cereal, and pastries (not your usual pastries though… these looked pretty freshly made).  They also had a chef preparing omelets to your liking and something else, though I didn’t’ check that out this morning because there was toooooo much other good stuff.  They had fruit, fresh yogurt to which you could add grains, nuts (macademia nuts, pine nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, some other interesting looking condiments).  They had baked chicken, fish, dumplings, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, some sort of spring roll,… I think I can’t remember everything!  They had fresh juices… orange, apple, pineapple, and mmmmm, something else.  Needless to say, we got our fill at breakfast. 

After breakfast we headed out for Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  We walked from one end of the Square to the other end of the City.  They have been restoring the Forbidden City, so the gold flake on the roofs and sidewalls was very impressive.  We basically saw the same things we saw 3 ½ years ago, but from a different view.  Before we walked down a corridor/alleyway and looked UP at the buildings.  This time we went up and down steps to get a better view of the buildings and the view from the top was spectacular.  It was pretty cold (the water in the ponds/rivers is frozen) and there were a lot of people there.  A friend back home had loaned us a “leash” (a little monkey backpack with a long tail that just happens to fasten around the child and the tail has a loop just big enough to loop around a parent’s wrist).  That came in very handy and we only totally tripped one person.  Thankfully it was a young guy who wasn’t at all phased by the unexpected “trip”.  Guille and his new friend Jonathan walked along together and played as they went.  I don’t know how much they saw of the place, but they enjoyed themselves. 

We ate lunch at a restaurant where they served the food in big plates/bowls and placed them on a huge lazy susan in the middle of the table.  We all had our fill of some yummy Chinese food.  There were several chicken dishes, veggie dishes, fish, “fried milk”, rice….  There was SO much food.  The amount of left overs was incredible.  But… the drinks??? Gotta ration those drinks!  There was ONE glass of either coke or spite per person and when someone asked for water… you would have thought they’d asked gold!  There were no free refills! (And in the hotel they give you 2 bottles of “free” water per day.  There are more bottles available in the room for a measly 40yuan (nearly $7.00!).And, no, they are not big bottles of water…they’re the 16 oz size.  Anyway, after our lunch we went downstairs from the restaurant to a jade store.  Wow, were there some pretty things there… and at a pretty price.  It made me rather nervous to have Guille walking around pieces that had a US price tag of $2000 or more.  Thankfully he was being very good and not touching things and not being silly.  Obviously, we didn’t load up on souvenirs there! 

On to the Great Wall!  We were a little surprised that we went because it was so cold.  Since we didn’t have gloves with us we took extra socks and used them for mittens.  Hey, it worked!!   We parked at a little shopping area near tower 6 (I think) and we all walked/climbed up to tower 7.  Guillermo headed back to the bus to warm up and Guille and I climbed (or rather dragged ourselves) up to a little “resting spot” between towers 8 and 9.  I thought we should go on up to tower 9 but Guille didn’t think that was a good idea.  Believe me, I thanked him for that wisdom on the way back down!  Shuuueey! My legs felt like wet noodles!  I think it was harder coming down than going up.  We got a few, (I mean very few) pictures there because the batteries in both cameras died and the backup batteries died.  Guillermo was able to warm the batteries for his camera and squeeze out a couple more pictures.  Some of the other families said we could get pictures from them.  That was sure sweet of them. 

On the bus ride back to Beijing from the Great Wall we all fell asleep.  Guille was so tired that he slept right through our Peking Duck dinner at a very nice restaurant.  We thought he would wake up when we picked him up and carried him in, or when we talked to him about food, or when they brought the food but nope, that boy is TIRED!  We put some coats of the floor and put him on there.  He snored a bit (provided dinner music) but mostly just slept very peacefully.  We did manage to get a “to go box” for him with a FEW of the abundance of left overs from the dinner.  I think we could have eaten leftovers from that meal for a month at home.  It’s a shame!  (Oh, and again… no refills!).  I carried Guille back to the bus, into the hotel, back to our room and put him on the bed.  He didn’t even flinch.  We changed him into his pajamas and let him roll over and go back to sleep.  Guess we didn’t need those “to go boxes”. 

The parking around here is tight!  As we were leaving the restaurant a motorcycle squeezed through between where the bus was trying to back up and another car.  Then the lady got out of her car and started screaming at the bus driver.  We didn’t know what she was doing.  She was just standing there in the way and yelling.  Finally the driver opened his window and said something to her, they argued back and forth a bit, then he got out of the bus, went back to her car and saw there was a dent and scrape.  Nobody on the bus felt him hit anything or heard any scrapes, but supposedly he had hit her car. So he paid  her 300 yuan (about $50) and we were on our way.  Now that’s not something we tourists run into every day.  Hopefully we won’t run into anything again!!  We got back to the hotel without incident and got our instructions to be in the lobby at 9:00AM to go to the airport to head out to our next hotel… in the province where we will meet our children, where WE will meet Isaac!!

Speaking of the hotel:  It is very nice.  It has a mini mall attached to it with restaurants, stores, pool/spa, Baskin Robins, Starbucks, a deli, clothing stores….  The main door into the lobby is a rotating door that has Christmas lights inside of two of the sections.  We were trying to figure out how they do that without tangling up.  Anyway, a couple of funny things:  In OUR room, we couldn’t figure out how to turn the lights at the head of the bed off last night, so we took a washcloth and loosened the lightbulb.  This morning we found that the switch is on a nightstand next to the bed.  It controls all the lights!  Go figure!  Another couple thought the lights didn’t work at all in their room so they had the maintenance man come and he took out some ceiling tiles, then noticed they hadn’t put their room key into the little slot inside the room that controls the electricity in the room.  Boy, did they feel silly.  It is so dry in here that we have a coffe pot boiling water to add some humidity.  I hope it doesn’t damage the ceiling in the little cubby hole where it is.  I’m glad it’s helping though. 

Well, the boys are sleeping and I should probably join them.  Some of the families will meet their new children tomorrow when they arrive in their province.  I THINK we are getting Isaac on Monday, though we might be surprised.  I’m planning on Monday though.  Good night/Good morning.

Uuummmmm, pictures will be coming sometime… hopefully soon.