Day One

Tiananmen Square was still a little decorated for last week's Oct. 1 holiday of becoming the People's Republic. Each of the flowers in that GINORMOUS basket represents something such as longevity. The square houses most of the government buildings since Beijing is the capital city of China. Our agency guide, Jean, says as a child she dreamed of visiting the Capital city so we of course took tons of pictures to explain this to Brayden. The Forbidden City is where the Emperor lived in his 9,999.5 room palace. 9 is the largest single digit number so it was for the leaders only. It's forbidden because commoners were not allowed in. There is nothing green in the huge city behind the wall so the guards could see and there are 15 layers of brick underneath because the rulers were afraid someone would come in that way to attack.

When we finished those tours we took a short bus ride to Hutong, or old Beijing, where we got to take rickshaws to lunch!! Lunch was at someone's house and it was delicious! All 11 of us sat around this small table and they just kept bringing out food. There was so much left over and that is a compliment to the chef because if we had eaten it all it would have said he didn't make enough. We then took the rickshaw around the rest of the residential area with its narrow streets and saw an entire community.

We came back to the hotel around 3 for free time and most of us decided to meet in the lobby at 4:30 to check out the mall, the walking street where no cars are allowed, and the food stall street. The mall was....a mall. It's kind of amazing, and sad, to see the influence America has on other cultures. The food stall street: Wow....sensory overload!!!!! It was soooooo different from anything you'd see in America (some of the animals on the stick were still moving!!! Scorpions, spiders, starfish, and blowfish were only a few delicacies that we saw), but it was fascinating. We had dinner at this cute restaurant Jean recommended that had the menu in English also and had a great time learning more about our travel group. We were all proud of ourselves for staying up/out until 7 and we crashed at 8:30. Meeting the group at 8:30 am Sat for the Great Wall!!!!