I am a little on a nervous high right now as we are meeting Emma in about 2 hours, but I wanted to get all of this stuff down for journaling. Hopefully I can make sense of my chicken scratch notes that I took yesterday.
Saturday evening we tried our first Chinese pizza. It was really, really different. The pepperoni is like super thick summer sausage or something and the sauce was kind of spicy. We got a mushroom version and a pepperoni version. Food in the hotel is a little more expensive than when you are out and about. Yesterday, we had a whole lot of hot food served family style for about $18 USD. That fed 5 of us as George and Jason ate with us. Right after eating a piece of pizza, Katelyn just laid down on the bed and went to sleep instantly. I have never, ever seen her go to sleep that quickly in all her seven years. She was like going a mile a minute and then CRRRRAAAASHHH! I seriously thought she was ill for a minute, but then I realized she was just plain ole’ worn out.
Sunday morning was a little rough for Katelyn, but she got better as we got out and about. We had a little meltdown over whether Giraffie was going to get packed up or not as we had to have our suitcases down in the lobby by 8:30 am. We compromised and let him go in carryon luggage. I don’t know why that made a difference, but it did! All was well once again.
As we went on our way to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, George accidentally crossed a yellow line because pedestrians were in the way and he had to stop and talk to a policeman. Poor guy. It is never a good day when you have to get a ticket. Jason said it was not as busy as it would be on a Monday, but it sure looked crazy crowded to me!
The Olympics are a super big deal here. There are 5 little friendlies who are the official mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. They all have names and meanings, and all of the Chinese people know what they mean. They have posters all over town with them on it.
They are super cute! A commercial about the Olympics that I saw at breakfast really struck me. There are people all catching clean rain water as it comes down on them. It shows how much water is such a precious commodity here as you cannot drink the water at all from any source unless it has been purified or filtered. People all seem to carry a bottled water with them and it is widely available everywhere you go. We take something as big and precious as water for granted. Little side note, there is a wonderful program called A Child’s Right that is helping to provide water filtration systems for orphanages and other needed places. If you click here you can see a slide show of some beautiful orphans getting their first drinks of clean pure water from the filtration systems and learn about this wonderful organization. It is a very worthy cause, and one that I would donate to in a heartbeat.
Back to our trip. Jason showed us a picture of his 1 1/2 year old son. He is super cute! He said that he considers his son one of his biggest accomplishments of his life. He marvels in him and loves watching him as he grows and develops. His baby had on silver bracelets in the pictures. These are traditional bracelets that they put on the babies. They also have celebrate when the baby is 100 days old with some kind of ceremony and celebrate their life.
There are gardens and beautiful flowers everywhere. We took the main avenue through Beijing to the Square. There are government buildings on both sides. The subway system encompasses the 2nd Ring Road there. The Main road divides the city into North and South sections. The Tiananmen Square is in the center of the city.
Tiananmen Square is a HUGE open space that can fit up to 1.5 million people. They have a national event every ten years to celebrate National Day. It is a sacred place for them and they love to come and visit all throughout the year. Jason said he comes in the evenings when there are no tourists as they have all gone back home. Most of the people there during the day are tourists. Every day of the year you can see someone flying kites there. It is so big that many many people can fly kites at the same time. At night, sometimes people will put a tea-lite size candle in a water bottle on their kite and they will light up the evening sky. People were everywhere selling kites, Chairman Mao red books, the Chinese flag, postcards, books on the Square, etc.
We then went through an underpass underneath the street to the Forbidden City which is as large as 40 US football fields. It is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE. We just basically walked from the front to back and only saw just a tiny, tiny portion of it. I wondered how many of our hometown would fit just within that place. It is surrounded by a man-made moat with a man-made mountain and lake at the back. This is considered feng shui (sp?) — a means of defense. The city is where the Emperor of China lived with his Empress and many concubines. The concubines were not allowed to leave the city ever. You walked through gate after gate until you got to the Emperor’s living area. They were doing a lot of renovations. It has been an ongoing process over several years as they put so much detail work into it. After the Emperor’s living area is the Empresses’ living area. Then you walk to the gardens where the Emperor, Empress and concubines would go. There were mosaic tiles made from small stones all through the walkways. They all seemed to tell some sort of story or contain pictures of different events. The trees were very, very old and beautiful with stones. There was a small man-made mountain that had a beautiful building on top of it where the concubines could go up only one time a year to see the city outside. The Forbidden City was built at the same time as the Great Wall in the 14th century. When the Chinese do anything, they do it BIG! There were many shops within the Forbidden City. Jason stopped at a ice-cream stand and bought us a frozen yogurt bar and Katelyn and ice-cream bar. It was very good as we were absolutely dripping wet in the heat. Two young women walking arm in arm passed Katelyn and commented to each other on how pretty she was (Jason translated the comment for us!). They would just stare at her in admiration. She garners a lot of attention with her blonde hair! It is very common to see young girls and women holding hands or walking arm in arm as a sign of natural affection. It does not have the same meaning as it holds for us in the states. It is very innocent and sweet. It is sad that we do not have those same views anymore in our country, and that it is almost always associated with being a lesbian or gay person at home. Our time at the City was almost a whirlwind and a place I want to come back to some day and just explore.
Then we went to the Beijing Zoo as Katelyn really, really needed to see some Great Pandas! On the way, there was a sweet young couple on a motor bike. They were holding hands at the stop light. I tried to take a picture, but I was not fast enough. It was like a scene out of Roman Holiday or something. Although, I can tell you that Rome definitely did not invade China as that pizza can attest! Ha, Ha!!
The zoo was a very big place. We walked through it steadily for over 2 hours and only saw about 1/3 of it. Katelyn got a stuffed panda and was very happy to see them. They were all so hot that they were sleeping and hard to see, but she was content with that. Most of the people there were families and they were enjoying a nice Sunday afternoon at the zoo. It was scorching hot, but that didn’t stop anyone! There were tons of little girls running around in cute dresses with little fairy wings and wands that their mamas or babas bought for them at the shops. I probably could have taken a picture of every one of the children we saw as each one was just as adorable as the next, but I refrained as it seemed rude to take pictures without asking. That didn’t stop one girl with a Canon slr camera and a HUGE lens from taking pictures of us! It was pretty funny! I guess we made a different and interesting subject for her! It was heart-wrenching to see all those children and try to imagine what Emma will be like when we meet her in person. You could reach out an touch some of the animals like the zebras and the ostriches. It was weird to see people gathered around them petting and feeding them, although there were signs saying not to feed the animals. Most of the animals had large areas to roam, although it seems as if the keepers have a hard time keeping up with all of the animals as much as we would at home. The tigers, cheetahs, and lions were in quite small cages. The lion looked straight at me with such soulful eyes for such a very long time. He was such a magnificent animal. The cheetah was super hot and pacing and panting very loudly. The bears had a nice area and were begging for food. It was really funny to see. People in the zoo, especially older people would just lay down on the benches and take a nap when they were tired. You definitely don’t see that at home. There were dragon boat rides and speed boat rides. They have a very large aquarium which was a separate cost, and a science musuem all in the zoo. We’ll share pictures later.
I have much, much more to type and share, but right now I am about 15 minutes from meeting my daughter, and my legs are bouncing a mile a minute!!!
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