Continuing the Journey

Another Jam-Packed Day in Beijing!

In the interest of keeping us all awake…and attempting to get us on “China time”… Sindy had another overpacked day in store for us today. Yesterday we were out and about for 10 hours, today it was 12! I am too old for all this walking and activity!

Our first stop today was the jade factory. Our guide at the factory…
…was so cute and funny. Since I am a huge fan of all things jewelry, I truly enjoyed visiting the jade factory. We learned how to tell the difference between jade, marble, and glass and spent quite a bit of time shopping around. There were huge jade carvings, costing over 1 million yuan and simple pendants costing as little as 60 yuan (currently one dollar of U.S. money is equal to 6.8 yuan). When we saw some of the crazy prices, Daddy suggested we should find the “Walmart section”…and we did! I really wanted to get a piece of jade…just something small that I could wear back home, to keep a piece of China with me all the time. I found this in a bargain bin…

…small purple jade pendant in the “bargain bin” and Daddy made me buy it. (I’m not kidding…he wasn’t going to leave that jade factory until I picked something. What a sweetie!!) And, yes, Meggie I bought PURPLE jade. Get over it! Since everything in China has meaning of some sort, I asked the sales girl what purple jade meant. She said it is “romantic.” Uh, OK…

After the jade factory, we headed to Beijing’s biggest claim to fame…

…the Great Wall! Unfortunately, it was incredibly smoggy today and visibility was horrible. Our group started up the steps, with the ultimate goal to reach that guard tower at the top of that first hill. Not all of us made it. One person in particular pooped out only about one-fourth of the way up the hill. That wimp…

…was ME! I thought I could do it, but the steps are incredibly uneven (a six inch high step will be followed by a step that is 18 inches high…very difficult to navigate) and, with the bad air quality, I was having trouble breathing! The higher I got, it occurred to me that I had to be able to get back down...and with my bad knee, I wasn’t in the mood to injure myself and need to gimp around China for two more weeks. So I headed back down and “people watched” while the rest of our crowd spent the next 90 minutes conquering The Wall. Daddy made it to that guard tower and, while he was truly proud of that accomplishment, he looked pretty haggard when he got back to the bottom. We were told that a man isn’t truly a man until he climbs The Wall and then touches this stone…

…so that’s just what Daddy had to do! We got a picture of us together near The Wall…

…before heading to a cloisonné factory. For those who don’t know…and I was one of you before today…cloisonné is intricately decorated enamelware. Honestly, it didn’t do much for me…it’s kind of busy and gaudy in my opinion…but we were kinda stuck there with the group. As a few of us moms were standing near the entrance, comparing pics of our kids and chatting, one of the dads came up and told us we were missing lunch. Lunch?! Oh, that’s WAY better than shopping for cloisonné! We headed upstairs to a large lunchroom…it felt a bit like eating in the mall. The food was great and I want you all to know that I have mastered the art of chopsticks! I didn’t use a fork for lunch or dinner today!! (Yeah, me…I can scratch that one off my bucket list!) However, when this arrived…

...I started to lose my appetite. Didn’t get a good look? Well, the fish did…

…and that nasty eyeball stared at us all the way through lunch. (Insert barfing noise here.) Disgusting!! Daddy and some of our travelmates decided that they needed to wash lunch down with a toast using the Chinese rice wine sitting on the table…

…so, Daddy, Tasha, Erin, Michael, and Ann raised their ridiculously small wine glasses and then took a swig…

…of what smelled exactly like fingernail polish remover. I love Erin’s face in that photo…she’s such an adventurous gal and will try pretty much anything they put in front of her! I, by the way, chose not to drink the Chinese wine. I value my innards to much to ingest that nastiness!!

After lunch, we headed to Daddy’s favorite part of the day…

…a visit to the Olympic village, where we saw the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube (from the outside). To me, the Bird’s Nest was just an obnoxiously large eyesore, but Daddy was truly impressed that he got to see it up close. Men…such a mystery to me!

After the Olympic Village, we headed to a traditional tea ceremony. I wasn’t all that interested in this portion of the day when they told us about it, but I truly did enjoy watching our hostess

...make the teas and tell us about their history. However, I’m starting to feel like a giant...

…because the dishes here are so TINY! (In case you care, the cup on the left is the sipping cup, the one on the right is the smelling cup where you can enjoy the aroma of the tea before actually tasting it.) The coolest part of the tea ceremony was when she dropped a ball of tea leaves about the size of a brussel sprout into hot water and got this…

…very cool flower. Apparently, you can drink the tea and then save the flower for up to six days as decoration. How neat is that?!

We rushed from the tea ceremony to the Beijing Theater to see an acrobatic show. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but it was truly amazing! One of our travelmates, Lance, even got pulled up on the stage and became part of the show. They shoved him (nicely and gently, I’m sure) into a large ceramic-looking planter, then five men lifted the planter on its side up on a young girl’s feet (she was lying on her back with her feet up in the air) and she not only balanced him up there, but was able to very smoothly rotate him in a full circle. It was so cool! And Lance is a great sport…even taking part in some of the very cheesy “acting” after they released him from his “planter prison.” We hooted and yelled like crazy people…and Lance’s wife and kids tried not to have heart attacks. (After all, if that girl had dropped him…) He, however, insists he was not afraid. Yeah, right!

We then headed to dinner – at 7:30PM! – for another “eat with the locals” adventure. We actually had Peking duck and it was very good. The only thing that bothered me a bit...

…was seeing those poor ducks with their bills still on! Is that gross or is that gross??!! (Insert barfing noise here as well.) What was Sindy trying to do to us?!?! Blecchhh…

So that was our day. I swear I’ve done more in the past two days than I can typically cram in an entire month! We are all looking forward to heading to the province tomorrow and having a lazy day! I, personally, want to lie in bed and watch movies all day...and take a nap! My feet and legs are KILLING me and I’m EXHAUSTED!

We leave at 8AM for the airport and will arrive in Zhengzhou around noon. I may not have much to blog about tomorrow…but hold on for the best blog post of ‘em all when get our little Molly Jayne on Monday morning (which is actually Sunday night in your world)!!

So, another favorite pic of my big kids…

and I’m off to bed.

Next stop, Zhengzhou…and then Gotcha!!