Hello from Beijing

Well, actually, we have left Beijing and are on the plane headed towards Guangzhou. We were completely exhausted last night and didn’t even open the computer. In fact Abigayle fell asleep at 5:30 and didn’t wake until midnight. Eric fell asleep at 7 and I woke him at 9 to help me get packed up. We started our day of sightseeing yesterday by going to Tiananmen Square. It was just as impressive this time as it was last time for me. As it was a Saturday morning,there were what seemed like millions of people there.

K,E and A in front of Forbidden City.

We then crossed under the freeway to go to the Forbidden City. The forbidden city is broken down into three sections: Business, Living Quarters and ??. Each section was immense. It would be so easy to get lost in there. Abigayle was on the hunt for Princesses and we finally found pictures of princesses (concubines-all the wives of the emperors and she was happy.


ornate temples in the Forbidden City








emperors throne

All the doors were immense—you were supposed to rub the balls on the doors for good luck—just like in the Karate Kid 2 movie, also notice the large step in the doorway—every time you went through a door, you had to step over the step—they were designed to keep the bad spirits out of the houses and the good spirits in.






Grace tried to get out of taking us to a Jade factory, but I wouldn’t let her. We got a private lecture about the different types of Jade and got to see how it is carved. Eric and I picked out a beautiful Jade

stone to have made into a ring for Jaxon when he gets older. From there, we went to the Cloisonné factory and got to see how Cloisonné is made. The intricate detail work is something I still have not gotten over. Again, we went shopping and found something to give to Jaxon when he gets older. I would have loved to have shopped there for a lot longer, but we still hadn’t made it to the Great Wall.

Abi and I heading up the wall.



Finally, we get there and Abigayle is in her glory. She took off or should I say up only stopped because we kept making her wait up for us. Without going into detail about how high we made it, I will say that through much huffing and puffing we accomplished our goal. The highlight was at one of the towers we made it to, there was a secret passage way that let up to the top of the lookout tower. Abigayle was determined to go up, so even though Eric was protesting, up we went. Let me just say, that it was almost a directly veritical climb on steps that were no more than 5 inches wide. Yeah—we made it.


Abi climbing the wall.








look how high we climbed!




The views were awesome, but we finally had to go back down. Eric and Abi went first, leaving me at the top by myself where I suffered a bit of a panic attack. There were no rails to hold on to go down and remember the steps were only 5 inches wide and did I mention it was a vertical climb. There was no way I was going to climb back down. Call in the helicopter, b/c it wasn’t going to happen. Well after lots of encouragement from Eric, Abi and numerous Chinese people, I made my way down. It was then time to go back down th e wall. I got to be the line leader, much to Abi’s dismay, (like I was going to be able to break her fall) and down we went. On our way back to the hotel, we drove past the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest which were built when Beijing hosted the Olympics back in 2008. Both were a sight to see, but Eric taken so many pictures by then, that we lost the battery on the camera (Mom-are you impressed?).

After waking at 4 am again today, we are now flying to GZ and will get settled into our hotel. Tomorrow is Gotcha Day. Tomorrow we will be the parents to TWO beautiful children. Life is good.