Tour Day 1

Best part of today: learning that we will meet our daughter Sunday at 3 pm, and our plane ride will now be at 7:50 instead of 11:30am!! Yay!

Least favorite part of the day: sweating our way through the Forbidden City-- the city itself was neat and culturally interesting, but with the HUGE crowd of people and the humidity - it was pretty uncomfortable. The van ride in the Beijing traffic was not fun either.

We saw the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and Tianemen Square, plus we learned about cloisonné and jade. We drove past the Birds Nest stadium, but it was pretty smoggy out, so we did not get any pictures.

We've been pretty okay with food. Our breakfast buffet at the hotel was delicious and plentiful. It was a mix of east and west: congee and yogurt, steamed buns and pancakes and dragon fruit and bacon! Yum!! We had Americanized Chinese food for lunch on our tour which was edible, and tonight we had some yummy dumplings at a local place near the hotel that were dirt cheap. Four people ate for less than 20 bucks!!

Our guide has been fantastic- so helpful and knowledgeable! She has translated things, introduced us to things like dragon eye fruit, jade and many Chinese ways! She was very keen on learning about New York City and the US....

Jet lag has not been a problem! We are very excited about tomorrow and doubt we will sleep much! Tomorrow will be a crazy, emotional, thrilling day for us, and yet bittersweet as Jenny Mei will be taken from everything she knows and loves. We hope the transition is smooth, that's the best we can hope for.

Tomorrow is bound to be hectic. Exciting, but hectic.
We cannot wait! Tomorrow we will finally get our Beautiful Star!!