Beijing- Day One

I am having a hard time with my connection so sorry for the lack of updates. I have figured out its easiest to blog from my iPhone so I will keep it with me to take photos from here out, so we are able to post them. The other family here with an iPad is experiencing the same problem.

We all woke up around midnight feeling like it was time to get up. After two hours of tossing and turning on rock hard beds Rance and I took some Melatonin. Apparenty, the nicer the hotel, the harder the bed. Tonight I think we will just take the melatonin right away!

At breakfast we managed to hook up with two other families in our adoption group. We got aquainted early on which was nice. We are feeling so bad for one of the families who is stuck in Shanghai due to weather. They should be here soon. We absolutely love our group.

We met our guide, Cindy at 9:00 and were off for the day. It was truly a magnificent day. We did the Hutong Tour which was awesome to see real Beijing life. They took us by a local mans home to see and hear from. The culture here is very rich and the people are so, so nice. They often stop and stare and even take pictures of the kids.

We strolled through the Forbidden City for two hours and only saw 20 percent of it. It was drizzly but we still had a great time. When we stopped for a group shot, the Chinese people gathered and started taking our photos as well. It was quite comical.

We were on our own (without guide) for dinner. We went with our group across the street to a local restaurant. We laughed till we had tears running down our faces due to the difficult communication and the many closed pallets when it came to "real" Chinese food. Some of us were experiencing numb tongues from the peppers we guessed, and others simply filled up on steamed rice and soda. That dinner is the photo in this post. Perhaps the most surprising part was the bill. There were ten of us and it came to 240.00, roughly $35. Wow.

Hopefully we will get a better connection at the next place and be updating more often with more photos!!! Just two more sleeps till we get our guys! Eeeeekk!