July 4th

Happy Fourth of July!!

We woke up again at 5:30 am. I know we are suffering from jet lag. It is kicking in for me now, big time!

Today we visited Tiananmen's Square, The Forbidden City, toured a Hutong house, and got to ride in a rickshaw.

It was so hot and HUMID today! Can you say sweat?!? Ugh. And our guide said this is nothing compared to Guangzhou the city where we adopt Julia. Thank goodness we will have a swimming pool there! :-)

Tiananmen's Square is so huge in scale and besides history, I find it a great people watching area. Candy talked about the different government buildings on each side of the square. One building, Chairman Mao's mausoleum is where you can view his body in a see-through tomb. The Chinese come far to view his body. That was a little bit strange for me to think about...but, it must be important for them because the lines are at least 2 to 3 hours long for a very quick viewing.

We moved on to The Forbidden City, which due to heat and crowds was challenging to tour. Hundreds of people together in lines. Nick doesn't care for crowds even in a store back home and i think he was really challenged here. I had forgotton how many areas Forbidden City had and how lengthy the whole area spanned. When Candy told us that Spring and Autumn are the busiest times to visit and this wasn't really as crowded as it could get, I couldn't believe it. You can only peek in to view the rooms, and since there were so many people in line to each building i only peeked into Emperor's room. I still cannot get over how many buildings are in the Forbidden City. The buildings are really beautiful. Before coming to China, we had watched The Last Emporer so we could have an idea of the history there.

After touring The Forbidden City, we were walking around the area and a lady on a bicycle stopped to talk to us. Her name was Mary and she asked us where we were from. She told us she taught English and she has lived in Beijing her whole life. I talked with her a long time. She said she doesn't like living in China due to the air pollution. I could definitely understand that reason. Since being here, we have not seen the sky. Many people are wearing the medical masks over their mouths. Grant and I are getting some congestion and cough, thankfully they haven't turned into bad colds. I can understand why people spit a lot here, too. Spitting is quite common here, due to the air.

The rickshaw ride was really a fun experience! We almost had a rickshaw crash when we came up to an intersection, which was quite funny. A lot of tourists were riding in rickshaws during the day in this area.
We had a different  guide for the Hutong house tour. His name was Roger. He was asking about our Fourth of July celebrations, our celebration with fireworks, especially the Washington DC display of fireworks. He also went and saw the new Transformers movie the night before, which Jake and Grant thought was pretty cool.

It was interesting touring a Hutong home. We learned about the red doors on the front of homes, each home tiny but quaint. I thought they were so awesome until Roger mentioned about 8 families share a communal bathroom. Now that was REALLY different, for sure! We sat inside the home where both grandparents had lived over 100 years old. Their secret to a long life? Daily exercise, drinking lots of tea and healthy eating. Hmmm. I am thinking no ancient Chinese secret there, just Chinese will power and good habits, which I so need to learn to develop and practice.

After our tours we had another delicious lunch Candy ordered. I love how most of the dishes here are spicy, I keep thinking we are in the Hunan Province (which is known for their spices) instead of Beijing!

After touring, we all came back to hotel and fell asleep at about 5pm. I just woke up and it's only 10 pm, everyone is sleeping. Yep, jet lag is in full force. I hope to fall back asleep soon and hope Nick and boys sleep through the night.

3 more days until we get Julia!