The Whole Story! Day 1!

Oh my! Today we went to The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square (which was closed off). Our guide today was Charlotte. She is so sweet, we love her. She will not be able to go with us to Tianjin tomorrow, but Belinda will be going with us to Tianjin and Charlotte says Belinda is great. Charlotte will make sure to see us again on Thursday night when we are back… she wants to see Maria. :) Thursday night we will be going to an acrobatic show… I am sure Maria is going to like that!

The Forbidden City was neat! Such a big area!! It was the Palace that the Ming and Chin dynasties lived and worked in. The dynasty ended in 1911. The last royal bloodline died in 1968, I think… he was an emperor as a child, and then had hardship after hardship through the World wars, including captivity, then finally spent his last years as a gardener! Apparently he wrote a good book called “From Emperor to Citizen,” we will have to look it up and see about reading it.

At the FC (Forbidden City) there was the courtyard, the outer court and the inner court. Women were only allowed in the inner court because they were part of the royal family, and they had to enter from the back gate, no women were allowed to enter in any of the 5 front gates. Only the emperor was allowed to enter the center gate. There was a couple different thrones for the emperor to sit on. I have never seen so many dragons in my life!!! Goodness, they were everywhere! Ugly things, if you ask me…

Then we had lunch at a local restaurant… OH MY WORD!!!!! Fabulous!! The best Chinese food ever!!! We had 2 tofu dishes and one dish of eggplant and green beans! We ate with our little chopsticks… just fine! I however learned a few things from watching the Chinese eat with theirs! I learned how to eat the rice, by pinching it from underneath. The eggplant and beans were a tad bit spicy, but SOOO good! Jokingly I threw a piece of red (HOT!!) chili onto Jerry’s plate and he scooped it up and ate it… then just about died, it took him a while to cool off his mouth and throat! He thought it was a sweet red pepper!! Haha! crazy! One of the tofu dishes we had was cut in thin strips, and was dried out, so it was VERY firm and only ¼ inch thick, it was very good, mild but with really good sauce and flavor… I need to learn how to make THAT kind of tofu! We had a good time talking… religion, politics, finances, kids, city life in Beijing, etc…

Then we headed to Tiananmen Square, but the Police had everything blocked off and not allowing anyone in… so we walked around and looked at other things… then we walked through some Hutongs, the old neighborhoods where families and neighbors all live in block with a central courtyard to share. They are very old and such a part of the Chinese culture, but they are demolishing them steadily to make room for high-rises. It was nice to see them before they are all gone. They are similar to the houses in Ualsk.

At the end of that walk to went to the Silk Factory. That was neat to see all the silk that they produce! It takes about 80 layers to make a silk (filled) blanket. And I forgot how many silk cocoons it takes to make a layer! But they use the silk from the worms that spin their cocoons two worms together! Their silk doesn’t come out in long strands that are good for making fabric. The use the single worms for the fabric to make clothes. They showed us how they make the blankets, and tried to sell us one. They would be cool to have, I have to admit… but we don’t really need one. :) Then we looked around the store. Amazingly beautiful things!!! Oh my! I could have bought a bunch there… however we restrained our selves. Haha! We did buy a scarf, for me. I want to wait until we have the girls to buy anything for them.

Then we caught a taxi back to our hotel and exchanged some money… oh goodness. We wanted to exchange all that we will need for our time in Tianjin getting Maria. So we decided to exchange seven thousand. Ok… it sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t that big of a stack… however it became a HUGE stack!!! Good grief! Their largest bill is a hundred… so… image… for just $5300 we now have 53 bills to haul around, and that is just one of the orphanage donations! We decided to wait to exchange the donation for Kimi’s orphanage! Otherwise we will need a whole briefcase to carry it around in! haha!

When we got back to our beautiful Wangfujing Grand Hotel, we showed Charlotte the name of the little girl we are going to try to visit and take her something from her new mommy in the states. Charlotte called the Orphanage and checked to see if we would allowed to see her, and they said YES!!! So we should be able to see her and get some pictures of her for her family back home!!! YAY!!! We are so happy to be able to do that!! I hope her family can come soon!!! Its going to be so hard to leave her there… after we’ve seen her, touched and held her! She and Maria live together.

Tonight our plan is to pack up for Tianjin. We will be able to leave most of our luggage here with the Concierge, since we will be back on Thursday for two nights. So that’s nice we don’t have to haul ALL of our stuff over there! Just what we will need for Maria and us for one night.

Then we are going to go out and walk the street where all the food vendors set up at night! That should be fun! Charlotte said we will see all kinds of weird things being cooked! She said we could take pictures and the boys (Alex and Anthony) would like to see that stuff!

Oh Jet lag! Not so bad… so far. We have been fine all day, it is now about 6 pm and we are getting a little tired, but we have been out walking around the city all day! Jerry’s getting a little power nap before hitting the town, though!

I suppose you all are tired of reading all this rambling… and I have run out of things to say… except tomorrow we become a family of 5!!! J Yay! We can hardly wait to meet our baby!