Morning folks (or evening)..

Its 4:15am here, Monday morning, we’ve been up since 3. As you can tell we are still struggling a bit with the time change. However, other than Mar’s cold, we feel pretty good.

Yesterday, we spent the morning walking the Beijing streets and checking out a few malls and markets. In the afternoon we toured the Forbidden City where all the Chinese Emperors lived. When we arrived our guide went off to buy our tickets. While she was gone some 4 foot 4, one legged, 80 year old, homeless dude freaked out on me. He got all bent when I wouldn’t give him any money, poking me in the chest, cursing and screaming at me. I kept telling him that I don’t understand you and he finally left. I guess my appearance isn’t very intimidating. I’ll get a tattoo, new facial piercing, and hit the gym when I get home. Other then the beggar dude it was a beautiful day, almost 70 degrees. Although Mar and I had been here before, it was still very exciting to see again, it’s a must see while here in Beijing as well as the Great Wall.

We then took off to see the birds nest and water cube where the 2008 Olympics were held. I can tell China, Beijing, and its people are very proud for hosting the games here and it’s venues that were created for it….and they should be. The birds nest and water cube are pretty neat to see in person and the engineering and structure are very impressive.

We then killed time at a tea shop before seeing an acrobat show. There was a little girl in the show, the age and size of Laine, and some of things she did just flat out scared me. I wanted to yell and her and put her in time out, “what did I tell you about stacking all the chairs in the house and doing a hand stand on them, huh? That’s a big no no!!”

After we got back to the hotel, Mar and I were hungry so we headed out for dinner. We walked around a few blocks, mustering up the courage to walk in to one of the places. We finally decided we’d walked long enough today and strolled in some local joint. They had pictures on the menu so we were in luck. I ordered a beef dish and Mar ordered a chicken dish, big surprise (she always eats chicken). The food came out in these oven heated stone dishes…and they were hot! The food was very good and burned my mouth on every bite. I bet that stone dish would give you 3^rd degree burns this morning! We were beat and crashed around 9pm.

We leave today for Changchun, the capital city of the Jilin province. We are one day away from Lyric, maybe it has nothing to do with the time change why we can’t sleep. I’ve been watching the weather, it’s a little cooler there, lows in the 20’s high around 41.

We did get informed of a schedule change yesterday. We will be leaving Changchun for Guangzhou on Friday, 3 days earlier then we anticipated. We are cool with this. It’s in the mid 80’s and we can shop, shop, shop there!

I tell ya, Beijing is an AWESOME city and so are the people (other than one homeless fella). Mar and I spent many hours just walking and walking, seeing the malls/stores, and engaging with the locals. I look forward to someday coming back and bringing the girls.

I will try and post something when we get checked in to the hotel in Changchun. Lets hope the internet service is this good!

Doug