Beijing, Day #... Something or Other

I thought it would be a blur and I was right! We are headed to dinner shortly but wanted to post a quick update to say we are here, we survived the flight, and are loving every bit of Beijing. Today has been amazing but it will take some time to fully process and put decent words around what we’ve seen and done. I have been on the verge of – ok, actually IN – tears a few times. I am overwhelmed by the beauty and sense of community of the people here and just felt a deep pang of loss for my kiddo. I know there is much for him to gain in his new life that starts next week, but today I got a sense of the scope of what he's lost that I can never fully replace. Someday I will bring him back here to soak in the culture because it truly is a treasure.

A quick recap of the last couple of days…

Good golly that is one long flight!! I mean I knew it was going to be long – but really didn’t care because the whole point was just getting here. But about two hours into the 11 ½ hour scheduled time, I was really starting to wonder how on earth I’d make it through! I had only slept 2 hours the night before we left and was up getting ready by 4:30am. Even running on no sleep though, I couldn’t sleep more than 30 minutes or an hour of the flight. Of course that was DURING the movies I wanted to watch and I was wide awake for the bad ones. Never been on a flight that shows four movies before! But we made it. Our guide picked us up at the airport and dropped us off at the hotel. We thought we’d shower and change and go explore…but we all just crashed once we hit the beds and slept straight through the night. Oh yeah, and my feet and ankles really objected to the confinement. Even with getting up and stretching and walking around the back of the plane every couple of hours, they swelled up ridiculously!

Today started with a great breakfast at the hotel with a huge array of choices. I was starting to wonder if we’d ever get my brother out of there! He’s already planning his menu selection for tomorrow.

We hit the Forbidden City next, and it’s incredible. I’ll need more time to sort through my thoughts on that one.

We walked through Tiananmen Square next – and it’s in the middle of being prepared for the Paralympics next week. The trip across it wasn’t nearly as long as I thought though…and because it was crowded I don’t think I got the same impression of the vastness that I expected. We also lost a bit of the view because of scaffolding that has gone up in preparation for next week's games.

The next stop was the Temple of Heaven. We were all about ready to hit the wall by then…information overload with so much to process. The gardens were gorgeous though and lots of good photo ops. I’ll have to load some of those when we get to Tianjin and I have more time. This is where I had my first overwhelming flood of emotions. Again, I need more time to process them.

I can’t possibly say enough about how much I loved the Summer Palace! I would spend hours or hours or even days there. SO peaceful, so gorgeous, and so many intricate details that you just can’t possibly take it all in. My favorite place today, hands down.

OK I’ve gone on too long already so I’ll cut this here. I need more time to get it down in words. But we are experiencing everything that I’ve heard makes up a real China experience – near miss pedestrian incident (which didn’t seen to strike our guide to be as “near” as I did…but from there on, we all crossed with him between us and traffic! We’ve seen the crazy driving and are glad to be in a minibus instead of a small car. We’ve seen my sister in law get her first taste of the celebrity lifestyle – local Chinese asked her to pose in photos with them. We’ve seen split pants and have cute little tushy photos to prove it...my brother's take is 1.3 billion Chinese can't be wrong and wants to know where they have those for adults! We’ve been accosted by more street vendors than I can count. Oh, and apparently I pass as Chinese enough because right off the bat, a little old lady approached me at the airport and starting rattling away in Chinese! Yes, at the airport at HOME. Did I remember ANY of the Mandarin I had learned? Nope. Not until we were sitting on the flight. Drats. OK now I’ve REALLY rambled on too long, especially since I really just meant to sign on to say we’re here in China and we’re fine.


About a day and a half to go….