Day 2 Beijing

We have had FULL day! Started out with breakfast at the hotel, it had a a lot of Chinese and American breakfast items. I can recommend the kiwi flavored yogurt. We left at nine am and took a bus with the other 10 families to a traditional Chinese village called a Hutong (I think???). We traveled through the Hutong on a bike pedaled rickshaw. The driver that "chose" us had Mickey Mouse on the seat. He was a little bit of a show off and liked to drive close to people swerving just to miss them or rubbing his tires against the other rickshaws. We visited the home of a Mrs Wu and she invited our group of 30 into her one room home to have tea and snacks. Don't worry, Mrs Wu was not some random stranger and she regularly provides these tours to adoptive family tour groups. She let me have her picture with her. She is a retired nurse from manchurian descent.

We had a family style dinner with fish, duck, chicken, green beans, Chinese beer, coke products and lots of unidentifiable foods. Everything was really tasty, thankfully the guides order for us. The restaurant even had a western style toilet - a major plus!! We headed off for Tianamon Square and the Forbidden city. My camera started to lose all power and most of those pics are stuck on Jeff's iPhone. Still trying to figure out how to retrieve them. It was very cold out. Several families in our group have brought their children and the kids were quite a hit with the young local teenage girls. They would race over to have their pictures quickly snapped with the kids, especially the blond little boy and the set of girl twins.

We headed out to Pizza Hut - don't judge, sometimes you just need a little comfort food! We went with 5 other families and thankfully one of the moms spoke mandarin!! One of the new pizzas has a ring of hot dogs on it with fried shrimp in the middle. We stuck with the pepperoni. Out of all the meals we have eaten, this is the only one that has left our stomachs a little jumbly. Please pray it passes quickly!

The other families here have been a God send, so nice to have their support and they really are a lot of fun! Two families have adopted here before and One of them is here for their fourth Chinese adoption, so good to rely on their experience.

FYI those weren't gas masks in our room, but masks to escape a fire... Good to know. Also we were able to finally open the window a little bit last night. It finally dropped the room down to a temp we could use a blanket but the pollution was a little heavier