Hotel View

Here is a view from our hotel room in Beijing.

A Street in Beijing

Nothing so special about this picture, just one of many streets in Beijing.

Tienanmen Square

After the Olympic Stadium drive by we stopped at Tienanmen Square.  The picture with the building is the Mausoleum where Chairman Mao's body is.

Olympic buildings

Saturday afternoon we drove by the 2008 Summer Olympic Stadium.  The picture with the taxi in it has the water cube in the background but it might be difficult to see.

Dragon buildings

These buildings are separate but were built close together because they wanted it to look like a dragon.  The tall building is the head and the other smaller buildings are the body.

Lunch on Saturday

After the Cloisonne Factory we had lunch upstairs. (For those familiar with the Cloisonne Factory, the one we were at in 2005 closed and there is a different one open by the Friendship Store).

Cloisonne #2

Cloisonne Factory

After the Great Wall was the Cloisonne Factory.  Even thought I saw this before, it was still fun to watch them make this stuff.  Something I missed last time was when they explained the coloring of the cloisonne is that they fill each little section with color, then fire it, then fill again and fire again.  They do that 7 times because the color shrinks in the firing process so that is how many times it takes before it is full with the color. Then there are 2 steps of polishing.

Great Wall Photos #3

Great Wall Photos #2

Great Wall

First stop of fun today (Saturday) was the Great Wall.  It was quite cold up there but with all my layers and all those steep steps I stayed plenty warm.  It was very pretty up there on the wall looking at the mountains.

Hotel

Here we are finally arrived at our hotel in Beijing.

Tunnel

Here is a picture of a tunnel we drove in on the way to and from the Great Wall.

Arriving at the Gate

Here is Al and Becky arriving at the gate in Chicago and us sitting there waiting.  We were all so happy the trip was actually going to start.

Dinner show

After getting settled into our hotel room we walked a couple of blocks to a restaurant.  It was all very yummy and we had a guy perform something fun.  You'll have to image this guy dancing around and every once in a while his mask would magically change colors. It was fun.  The restaurant was in a large mall and we were walking through much of it to get to the exit. This mall was very different from any in the USA, much of it was small booths. Many people were approaching us speaking English try to sell us something.  One lady was trying to show me a book of different purses she had in her store.  I wasn't interested so didn't say anything and kept walking.  It was amusing though and they assumed we spoke English. ~Judy

Almost there Photo

I was very happy to see this come up on my little screen on the plane!  They turned off our screens just after I took this photo,

On the plane photo

We made it

Here were are FINALLY in Beijing.  It was a long flight, but we did arrive about a 1/2 hour early.  I can't get to blogger here in China, but I can email posts to it.  I hope it comes through.  The internet connection is extremely slow and I can't seem to get the pictures attached.  I'll try again tomorrow. ~Judy

Phillip's Birthday

Friday was Phillip's 2nd Birthday.  Unfortunately we were not home so we celebrated yesterday.  Yesterday was also the day we celebrated the Chinese New Year with Alicia's adoption travel group.  We had a great time, but sure wish we could have celebrated the day with our son!

Our travel group for Phillip

Last night, we had dinner at Stir Crazy with our new travel group! Al and Becky brought their 3 daughters; their new son is in the same province as Phillip (Shanxi). Dan and Jamie brought their 5-year-old daughter, their new daughter is in Shaanxi province (that's with two a's).  We hope that Dan and Jamie can travel with us, but they are still waiting on travel approval.
Assuming Dan and Jamie travel with us, they will fly into Beijing with us but we will part for 1 week will they go to Shaanxi and we go to Shanxi with Al and Becky.  We will all meet up again in Guangzhou for the last part of the trip (6 days).