Touring Day

It is 3pm here in China and we are finally back to the hotel for a nap before our Acrobatic show tonight. The guide will pick us up at 6pm from the hotel. So everyone is taking a nap except for me as I am going to try to stay awake all day so I am not up again at 4am. I hope I don't fall asleep in the show tonight. Lucky for you all, I have nothing to do but blog ;)

We had a terrific day touring lots of different things today. The best advice I can give anyone for coming to Beijing is to hire your own private driver/guide. We have been able to do what we want-when we want. We started the day off at Tinnamen Square where the boys bought some little string kites. We walked around and by the way-it was perfect weather today and clear blue skies-great for touring. Anyway, we went through the square and then onto the Forbidden City where we quickly tired out of walking and kind of skipped through to the other side. It was pretty neat to see though. Then we were off to Caleb's favorite attraction-McDonald's! It was very funny to see our guide trying to order for us there, as she has never been there-WHAT?!? Needless to say I was much better at ordering from that menu as she was very amused at the Happy Meal concept that comes with the "free" toy. Funny. We enjoyed our Big Macs and fries and then we went next door for our big shopping adventure. We bought CJ a watch for about $5 and an alarm clock for about $5.

Next we were off to the highly recommended Hutong Tour via a rickshaw ride. This was alot of fun and very interesting. We were able to then go inside a family's home and visit a real life everyday China home and family. The boys really enjoyed this part of the trip. I couldn't help but think alot about Shelby today seeing this family and alot of other families and the way they live everyday in China. I felt very sad about taking her away from all of this deep culture and traditions here in China. I really hope to some day bring her back so she can experience and see where she was born and what type of life she may have lived her first 2 years of life. Even though I was feeling a little bit guilty about taking her away from all of this, at the same time I felt so relieved that she would not have to live like that. Very weird to have all of these conflicting emotions. I do love that I was able to get some great pics for her to see in the future.


Speaking of pics I am sure that is what you all want to see, so I will wrap up by posting a few from today. Only 2 more sleeps until my baby is finally in my arms!