February 14, 2005 Monday

Chris started the day at 4:00 am. He woke up & this in turn woke me up. We didn’t have to get up until 6:00 am so needless to say I wasn’t real excited. We went down to eat breakfast & they had a decent assortment of Chinese food & western. Chris ate bread, French toast with honey, & bacon. I had a real mixture like potato salad, boiled egg, bacon, & bread. They had salad stuff & rice but we just couldn’t bring ourselves to eat it for breakfast. We met our guide in the lobby at 8:00 am to start our touring of Beijing. We still can’t believe we are in China. We started at Tianemen Square (& spelling wasn’t my best subject). It was big & during warmer weather lots of people are out flying kites. We did see 2 people out flying kites. We then proceeded to The Forbidden City. It was named this by the common people of China because they were not only not allowed inside but were warned to not get too close. Within the city lived the emperor & his empress & concubines. One emperor had 3000 concubines, sorry I don’t remember which one. After touring there we went to the Jade market. I needless to say bought myself a bracelet & Aysia a pendant. We had a late lunch which was pretty good. I slipped up & ate a tomato, hopefully it was washed. Chris was brave enough to eat the fish. I couldn’t it had the head & tail still attached. After lunch we went on to the Great Wall. I enjoyed the ride to the wall as much as the wall. The mountains were nice to see being from such flatland in Georgia. We did climb the wall to 888 meters & decided not to kill ourselves. It was very steep. It really reminds you how out of shape you are. We stayed there for about 3 hours then went to the Beijing Pearl Market. The pearls were gorgeous. The shop had actually closed when we arrived but they opened back up for us. Needless to say they knew they could make a dime or two off us adoptive parents. We got a string of pink pearls for Aysia when she is older. We finished with dinner but I was almost too tired to eat. They really cram a lot of stuff in one day. I look forward to sleeping. Oh yeah, you can find Coca Cola Light sometimes. Plan on buying it when you find it because most places don’t carry it.