Great Wall

May 1^st we went to a jade factory.  I got the kids some pendants with their zodiac animals on them.  I also got a happiness ball for our home.  It’s absolutely amazing what people can do with a piece of stone. 

 

Next, we went to the Great Wall of China.  What an amazing experience!  We never thought we would be standing on the Great Wall in all our lives.  It’s beautiful and so immense I can’t even process it.  Unfortunately, we happened to be in Beijing during worker’s labor day weekend so every place we have gone has been wall to wall people.  The Great Wall was the worst so far.  There were too many people for us to be able to be near a hand rail to help us up the stairs (which are just straight up!).  It’s important to have that hand rail when you have a 5 year old with little legs.  Some of the stairs are normal size but some can be almost a foot high.  They are also very bumpy.  Millions of feet have worn deep grooves in the stones leaving high ridges where the mortar is.  Basically that means we didn’t get very far.  Lila got scared and didn’t want to go any further so we hung out on the easy tower and walked through a garden area.  We had amazing views so we didn’t feel deprived at all!

 

Our flight from Beijing to Zhengzhou was inexplicably changed from 10:30 the next morning to 7:30.  That meant getting up at 3am.  Not a problem.  With the jet lag that’s pretty much when we wake up anyway!  The traffic in Beijing is unbelievable, especially on a holiday weekend.  This is when there are tons of domestic tourist in Beijing.  There were a few other foreigners here but not as many as I thought there would be.  We have definitely been the star attraction.  Not only are we American but we have a Chinese kiddo.  People stop in their tracks to stare at us and sometimes take pictures of us.  Some people pose near us and take pictures but some are really obvious about it.  One young lady who spoke very good English asked us to pose for a picture with her.

 

We also went to the Bird’s nest and the Water Cube from the Olympics.  That was super crowded too but mostly with very aggressive peddlers selling kites.  I have to admit that they were really cool kites though.  Once we got past them though we were able to enjoy seeing the buildings.  Then, of course, we had to walk back through the peddlers to get back out of the area!

 

Lila still has a runny nose and had developed a wet cough.  She says she feels fine though.  Maybe its allergies or the pollution?  It’s very very polluted here.

 

Greg is definitely the class clown of our group.  There was the water incident and the accidently changing the clock 1 hour ahead so we were ready to go and the only ones around in Beijing.  Yesterday he ordered a beef dish at lunch that he liked quite a bit until he bit into some veggie that he was unfamiliar with.  It turned out to be an incredibly hot pepper!  There he is at lunch sweating with eyes watering and our group laughing!  Then in the afternoon after changing money at the bank we stopped by a 7-11.  While we were waiting outside for the rest of our group a bird treated him badly and we had to come back to the hotel so he could change his shirt.  I wonder what we are in for on the rest of this trip with him!

 

Today is gotcha day!  We go to the government building at 9 to meet our kids!  I’ll do a separate post about that later.  I woke up this morning with butterflies in my tummy!  Lila said she didn’t have butterflies in her tummy, they were ladybugs!  This morning she meant to say she woke up wide awake but said “wild awake” instead.  I think wild awake is more accurate.