China Day 2

Whew!! Today was our marathon tour of Beijing! We are back at the hotel, and everyone is asleep except me :) I just have to get a few thoughts down or I will forget...and, I know of just a few people who want to know what is happening over here. 

We met our beautiful guide Angela at 8:30 this morning. She is very flexible, and took us on a short side trip before we got started to get some coffee and breakfast food at McDonalds. Breakfast will be included at the rest of our hotels, but not this one (unless we wanted to pay $32 per person). 

Our first stop was Tiananmen Square. It was crazy for me to actually see the sights first hand, as I have seen them through the eyes of so many other adoptive families.

We all felt like movie stars today, and it began at this first stop. Carter and Jackson were especially popular :) One day I won't like the idea of so many teenage girls paying my boys so much attention. The Chinese people are very curious about Americans, and our large family kind of stuck out. We saw very few children, and no family with more than one child. It was kind of interesting, the role reversal :) It is typically YouYou that sticks out and gets lots of attention at home. But today it was the boys! 

Next, we toured The Forbidden City. Wow! Everyone says it is big, but oh my word! It was enormous...and we didn't even get to see all of it! This "city" was constructed in the 1400's, and although it took 11 years to gather all of the materials it only took 3 years to actually construct! I can't even remember how many courtyards we walked through! Each one was designed for a specifics purpose, some of which include protection, political affairs, personal matters, beauty, etc. If I remember correctly, it was created for China's 3rd Ming Dynasty empower. This was a pretty good field trip for the kids :)

I'm afraid this may not upload with so many pictures so I am going to break this up into two posts. The Great Wall was next!