Day one

Today was our first day of sight seeing in Beijing. After a good nights rest, we got dressed and headed downstairs to have breakfast. Our hotel had a very big breakfast buffet full of both American and Chinese foods. We were pretty impressed by their selection. We met our guide again, her name is Candy and she will be with us while we are here. She took us first to Tiananmen Square where she gave us a lot of background information about the history of it.


After touring that we walked down to the forbidden city which is very close by.. Here she explained the dynasty of the emperors of China as well as several other interesting facts about the Chinese culture and symbols. The buildings are just beautiful! There is so much intricate wood carving details and the buildings are just incredible!

Once we finished that Candy took us to a restaurant called old Beijing noodles king which is well known for their noodles in a type of soy sauce. They were DELICIOUS!! I could have eaten the whole bowl!:) one funny thing Candy mentioned was that in Beijing people like to take their birds out on a walk down the street!!! The restaurant had several birds in cages and we just found that very different:) after lunch we did the hutong tour where we had a different tour guide show us around the "old Beijing" on a rickshaw. She gave us a lot of information about the symbolism about the entrances to people's homes, the thresholds, statues, and no number of knobs above the door. Another funny moment was when talking to Tina, we were learning about how she got her name. In China they like to pick themselves an American name. So as she was telling us about her family we asked her if her little daughter had a name. She said no but wondered if we had any suggestions. So we just kind of randomly said Sarah. She said she liked that name but wanted to know the meaning. Once we found out that Sarah meant princess she said that was a perfect name!!:) so we helped name her child!!;)

once we finished there we rode the subway to the pearl market where we did a little shopping. That was our last stop. We made it back to our hotel and called home quick to talk to the kids. They were very excited to at hi to us! For day one we have done pretty good with the jet lag, but now it is catching up! We are off to bed so we can be well rested for our second day of sight seeing tomorrow!:)

Our internet here is awful! We are hoping to get that fixed soon! Hopefully we can upload some pictures soon!