Day 1 – Beijing

Today was a day full of experiences that ranged from comical and nerve racking, to frustrating and appreciative.  We started out the day looking waking up to the sun shining in our window.  Imagine our confusion when we looked at the clock and it was only 4:30 am.  Anyway,   we had slept long enough and we got up and started getting organized.  

Our first quest was to find a SIM card for my phone, which we eventually found after a few stops.  I still don't quite understand how many minutes I have on it, but it is working and we can now make calls.  We bought some pastries in the market and some yogurt and started out on our little adventure.  First stop for the day was at the Forbidden City.  Our hotel is within a mile of the site, so we thought we would start by walking toward it and then take the subway.  After walking for about 15 minutes, we were all super hot and decided that we would sacrifice the sights for the underground.  Well, apparently we missed an important transfer on the underground and ended up a little ways off from our destination.  So, we ended up taking a taxi anyway! 

The Forbidden Palace was a real treat and Andrea loved it.  We had several tour guides bidding for our business and Andrea found a girl that she liked to give us a tour.  I was hesitant and thoughf the audio guide would have been a less expensive option, but the guide ended up being very good and worth the money (150 rmb).  Connor's highlight was having different people want to take pictures with him.  He really started to get into it and I told him he was like a Disney Character for the kids, which he thought was pretty cool.  One boy about 16 years old took a liking to Connor and was so excited to take a picture with him.  He came back later in the day and gave Connor a Chinese Flag as a token of friendship.  It was a nice gesture.  Those of you who know Connor understand that he had NO problem with is new-found popularity…….we will see how long that lasts. 

After we left the Forbidden City, we wanted to take a taxi back to Tiananmen Square, which is basically in front of the Forbidden City.  None of the taxi drivers were willing to lose their spot in line for such a short trip, until one guy said he would take us.  Then he walked us over to an unmarked car, which made us nervous.  So we opted out of that, and started a small bidding war for a rickshaw.  We climbed into one and we started on our way.  About 1 minute into the ride down the road, we started to get very nervous because we were cruising through heavy traffic on the back of a moped.  Finally we got to our destination and the driver pulled out a book that said "50 USD" on it.  I laughed at him and said no way.   He was trying hard to get us to overpay, but I gave him the 25 RMB we had agreed on and we went on our way.

We walked Tiananmen Square for a while and we were scorching in the heat.   Connor was melting and quite literally could find no shade to get of the sun.  Probably better to visit it in the morning or evening time!  After several attempts to find a taxi who would take us back to the hotel, we couldn't understand why we were being refused.  Finally we figured out that we were on the wrong side of the road for the direction we were heading.  For a short period of time we were pretty frustrated by the situation.

We stopped by the hotel and picked up some of our luggage to take over to our friend's house where we will be staying for a couple nights.  They have a beautiful apartment and two adopted daughters, 8 and 5.  She is a member of our Church living in Beijing and has been so kind to us.  Connor and her girls get along wonderfully and are having so much fun together.  We went out to dinner with 2 other expat families who all had boys Connor's age.  It was so much fun getting to know them and inspiring to learn about their lives here in Beijing.  Dinner was wonderful and we just kept eating!  After dinner we went down to a shaved ice dessert place and had these incredible "ice creations".  The kids loved playing together and were so cute to Connor.  They were all making plans for him to come to Sunday School tomorrow and he is now not interested in seeing the rest of the city!  He had 5 new buddies to play with and two sisters.  It was a great first day in China, but are heart leaps every time we see a little girl and we image what it will be like when we can finally get Lizzie!  We are coming baby girl, one crazy taxi ride at a time!