Great Wall, Summer Palace, and Forks

Good morning from Beijing! 

We had a lovely day yesterday. We woke up at 4:30am ready for the day. Jet lag..... The breakfast buffet at our hotel was wonderful- waffles are a welcome sight when you're in a foreign country! But they also had hundreds of other foods too- all wonderful.  We ate a lot because we knew we would need the energy for our climb up the Great Wall. After breakfast, our guide, John, picked us up right on time and we headed to the Great Wall. It was an overcast day with chance of rain. The drive was nice and we got to see some of the countryside in China. It took about an hour and a half to get there and we enjoyed talking with our driver. I highly recommend him if you are coming to Beijing in the future. John Yellowcar is his English name.

We took a cable car up to the wall. It's like a ski lift chair and it assaulted both Tom and I. I have a blue and purple elbow to prove it. I tried to reamin calm on the ride up but it's not for the faint of heart, that's for sure! When we got to the top, we started our climb- up the steep part of the wall. I was thankful for the clouds and eventual rain that kept us cooler during the climb. It was amazing.....AMAZING! There were hardly any other people on the ride and it was so peaceful and beautiful. It was a difficult climb but I made it. I can't even imagine how many stairs we climbed but I know for sure that we burned off the calories from those waffles. I felt like a champion when I made it to the top!

After our climb up and down the wall, we headed back to beijing. We stopped for lunch and John helped us order. Three family style dishes plus rice for each of us. We had lamb and noodles, beef and potatoes, and a chicken dish. We topped it off with a bottle of good ol' coca cola classic! It was very good and a bit spicy. At one point, Tom asked John what he was eating because his mouth was on fire. He showed him this tiny round ball that he had just eated, to which John replied, "Oh you're not supposed to eat that." Haha, good to know!! fortunately for Tom, the effects didn't last long. John was kind and got forks for us so we wouldn't have to fumble around with our food. I used chopsticks for a while but gave up halfway through the meal. I'll keep trying!

After lunch we headed to the Summer palace which is HUGE and beautiful. Both Tom and i thought it seemed a lot like Disney world with people selling silly hats, vendors selling corn on the cob (kind of like the turkey legs at Disney), and tons of people everywhere! We had a good time milling around and then took a boat ride back to where John picked us up. 

We made a quick stop at the Bird's Nest for a picture and then headed back to the hotel. John gave us a gift of chopsticks (to practice with) and a small mirror souvenier.

We could have easily gone to bed at that point but it wasn't even 5pm yet. We took showers and headed out for dinner. At dinner (on our own), the restaurant staff spoke no English. We ordered our drinks and some sweet and sour chicken and then there was an awkward exchange where we were supposed to tell them somehting but we have no idea what they wanted to know. There were only chopsicks on the table and we don't know how to ask for a fork. So when in China......  Big problem was that the food was so slippery. And I was SO tired. Tom was making fun of me by stabbing a piece of chicken with a chopstick, when a waitress came walk up, laughing, holding two forks. Thank you, thank you so much!

After dinner we headed to "snack street" where they sell many things "on a stick". But no corndogs or fried twinkies here. How about scorpions and snakes? The smell was overwhelming but i'm glad we went. What an experience. 

We got a pretty good night's sleep last night. We both woke up 1:30am ready to get up but forced ourselves to go back to sleep. 

Breakfast was yummy again this morning and we're headed to our agency orientation today. Then some more touring with our agency group. 

Somehow, our computer cord got fried and we have hardly any power left on it. SOOOO, pray we can figure something out. I'm on the computer in the hotel lobby but we can't post pics or skype home with this one. We'll survivie, but I would rather have our laptop working.

We assume that today is Caleb's last day in the orphanage and that he will be traveling to our meeting point tomorrow since we meet him early the next day. We will meet him 48 hours from now. We talked at breakfast about hwo Caleb is feeling, if he knows what's going on. How difficult for him. Good in the end, but hard right now. Adoption is a story of brokenness and togetherness. And while we know the end of the story is good, this is the hard part. I pray for my sweet boy's heart today- may he feel the love our family and our Father.

Talk to you later friends- please leave comments or email. We can't access facebook (AAAAH, The horror!) so if you're writing us there we won't see it until we get back.