Busy in Beijing

We started the day at 9am in the lobby and we met the rest of our travel mates- what a great group of people. We were so blessed on our first trip with a wonderful group of people to share this experience with, and we are equally blessed this time around.

Madeleine has a "big brother" in Robert, who is 5 yrs. old and they are completely taken with each other. Amazingly, the two of them kept up with us for the entire day. We began the site seeing with Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City (where the men in our group were particularily fond of the concubine tales), Temple of Heaven and Earth, lunch in a local restaurant (no pigeon yet), off for a walk aroung Huatong, an acrobatics show (Madeleine has some competetition here- at one point, I thought I might need a zanax while the person put 8 chairs on top of each other, and then balanced himself on his head on the highest chair- holy cow, as Madeleine said!) and we ended the evening with dinner (peking duck on this menu) and now we are all thanking our guide for letting us rest.

Memere is keeping up like a champ and Madeleine is giving our arms and backs a challenge, but she is taking all of this in so well, it's been a relief.

Let'see...we have all adjusted well to the time change; the pace of the day is certainly hectic; we have learned to push our limits by waiting, or try really hard to scout out the "western bathrooms"; and I believe a few in the group are already mentioning KFC or McDonalds, but we're hanging in. We are still holding strong on using chopsticks, even Madeleine has joined in on the fun.


Two days until we meet Audrey...

Signing off from Beijing, until tomorrow...