Monday, June 24

Monday, June 24

Not only was today our first full day in China, but it is also Ezekiel's "Family Day" - he joined our family on this day in 2015, exactly 4 years ago.  How fun that we happen to be in China to celebrate this special day!  

Our flight arrived in Beijing around 4:00 pm yesterday.  Another family in our group was on the same flight but we didn't realize it until after we went through customs and baggage claim and met up with our guide.  We got to our hotel after 6:00, got settled and we were all asleep by 8:00.  We were up early this morning but we had all slept pretty well through the night.  The boys were so excited about the breakfast buffet at our hotel!  They loved having noodles and spring rolls (and bacon!) for breakfast.  We had time to walk around some of the streets near our hotel and scope things out before meeting up with our group at 8:30.  There were six families today, but a seventh family will be joining our group tomorrow.  So far, all of the other kids are teenage girls, except for one older brother in college, so our boys are the youngest by far, but the older kids are all really nice and TongJie and Ezekiel have been having fun hanging out with them.  We went to the Temple of Heaven this morning - it was a LOT of walking in the hot sun and I thought it might be a little boring for the boys, but at the end of today, TongJie said that the Temple of Heaven was his favorite thing we did today.  Ezekiel did really well even though it was hot and bright.  We brought umbrellas, so having an umbrella helped, and part of the time we got to be in the shade.  It is actually a very large park, so the temple buildings (built for "the god of heaven" in ancient times) are only part of what we saw, and we also got to spend some time in the shady park area with juniper and cypress trees, most of which are very old.  We spent around 2 and a half hours at the Temple of Heaven, and then went to a silk factory and learned how silk is made, which was pretty interesting.  China is famous for its silk so it was fun to learn about how they make it and see some of the machines and stuff, and we also bought some things there.  Then we had lunch, which was served family style with a bunch of different dishes in the middle of the table for everyone to try.  Our guide, Cindy, whom we've had as a guide both times we were in China before, had the adults sit at a table together, and the kids sit at another table together.  Jeff and I were a little worried about how TongJie and Ezekiel would do sitting with the teenage girls (mostly worried that our boys would be annoying) but all the girls have been really nice and helpful to them, and TongJie and Ezekiel really liked feeling like part of the group.  TongJie told me that he was talking to one of the girls about golf, ha ha!  He'll talk to anybody about golf if they'll listen, but apparently this girl has played golf so she actually was a willing participant in the conversation.

After lunch, we went to an old traditional part of the city and took a tour on rickshaws.  The streets are so narrow in some places that there aren't many cars, but a lot of bicycles, mopeds, and rickshaws.  The area that we saw was kind of a touristy area so there were rickshaws specifically for taking people around on tours, but there are still many hutong areas of Beijing where people live that aren't touristy.  The ricksaw ride was fun.  Two people that could go on each rickshaw, so Ezekiel and I went together, and TongJie and Jeff went together.  Later, Ezekiel said that the rickshaw ride was his favorite part of today.

We got back to our hotel at 4:30, so it was a long day of being tourists, especially for an 8 year old and a 5 year old, but we're looking forward to the Great Wall tomorrow!  We celebrated Ezekiel's family day by going to Dairy Queen and walking around some of the streets near our hotel.  We're all pretty tired and the boys both fell asleep as soon as we had them take showers and got their teeth brused and into bed.

We've been taking lots of pictures, but right now I don't have a way to get them off of the cameras, so I'll just have to attach some pictures that we've taken with our tablet.  One is of the boys standing on the balcony of our hotel room, and the others are just pictures of them in our hotel.  China blocks a lot of websites, and one of them is Blogger, so in order to post to our blog, we have to send the post as an email.  It worked the two other times we were in China, so hopefully it will work this time as well!  We'll try to post some more exciting pictures in the days to come.