Day 3 Saturday, September 19, 2009

Our tour this morning was Tiemann Square and the Forbidden City. Each were phenomenal. The square is at the center of Beijing, and will be the focal place for the holiday on October 1. The guide said the the square is the largest in the world and can accommodate up to a million people. Would not want to be there when that occurred. Everywhere in Beijing, you can't help but notice the presence of police and the military, but at the square it is especially true. The Forbidden City is also large, but crowded. A kind of strange thing has been happening since we got here that we never anticipated. Everywhere we go we get looks by the Chinese people. We knew that would probably happen, and it is no big deal. But what we did not expect is the fascination that the Chinese people have with Trent and Jared. We have had several people come up to us and ask with hand gestures if they could take pictures with the boys. It is like they have never seen a white kid. My suspension is that most of these people that we run into are from the rural areas of China also visiting Beijing, just like us. After looking around quite a bit we have not noticed many foreign kids at all. A lot of foreigners, but no foreign kids. After the Forbidden City tour, it was off to another traditional Chinese restaurant for among other thing, Peking Duck. After a short pause at the Crow's Nest we made the journey to the Great Wall of China. The bus ride took about 45 minutes. On the way there Chris noted something odd. He remarked that he had not seen the sun since Tuesday afternoon. Many of you may remember from the Olympics last year that Beijing has so much smog. No sky, just a grey haze. It makes Fresno and LA look nice. Even at the Great Wall of China the view was very limited. But besides that, the wall was amazing. We managed to make it up a respectable amount up the wall. It is a very sobering thought to thing about how much labor went into the wall. Here we are, panting after just a short distance and the people(or slaves) who built it not only had to walk up and down it, but carry bricks too. Tomorrow (9/20) is our travel day. Each family in our group is going to the capital of the province in which there child is located. We will be traveling to Guangzhou, near Hong Kong. Monday (9/21) will be the day we meet Megan. Yea!