China: Day 2

**Beijing, China**

Our 2nd day in China just happened to be C-Dub's 11th birthday!

He has been talking about learning Chinese (Mandarin) since he was about 5 years old. (Totally unrelated to and way before we talked about adopting from China.) We all thought it was pretty cool that we got to celebrate him there. David and I didn't want to skip our regular traditions for kid's birthdays so we brought along our red plate, wrote him his birthday letter and read it at breakfast that morning. I don't think he knew we had packed those items until we brought them out that morning. Two points for us ;)

This is the amazing buffet at our hotel.

We are showered, dressed and ready to enjoy our 3 days in Beijing. First buffet here we come! They packed eat day full of culture, food, appointments...it was great but exhausting!

This is David's first day of noodles with vegetable made to order...for breakfast.

C-Dub enjoyed I don't know how many servings of noodles. I don't think he got tired of them the whole trip. Noodles are a food group for this boy! (Above: David reading C-Dub's bday letter to him)

A few months ago a friend passed along this World Vision Devotional book to us. With the business of school, summer and adoption prep we never opened it. So for our trip we thought we would bring it along to read at breakfast with the family.

It.Was. Amazing!

Each and every day spoke directly to what we were experiencing on our trip, with our adoption and so on and so on. It was the coolest!

 This is the view from the glass elevator into the open-ish dining room we had breakfast in each morning. It was on the 3rd or 4th floor. Our room was on a higher floor so we got this view each morning on our way to breakfast. The ceiling was all skylights, that's why it is so lit up. It felt like you were outside...but cooler!

First event of the day was to The Forbidden City. Only a few days a month, I think 2, the guards practice on the lawn. We happened to go on one of those days. While our guide was getting our tickets we watched them practice their drills. It was only about 10 am and we were sweating.

(Me documenting the kiddos documenting)

There were some really cool aspects of such old architecture with meaning behind each and every thing they did. This door has 9 doornails by 9 doornails on it. (That's because '9' was regarded as the biggest number in ancient China and it was used to imply the emperor, resembling the imperial power in a symbolic sense.)

Here we are taking our first family photo in a famous Chinese location and in comes...

...a Chinese family wanting a picture of their child WITH us! The first of M.A.N.Y!!!

This is just to show the masses of people at this location. There were four or five other courtyards that we visited after this one and they were all this busy or busier! It was the end of their summer holiday so people from all over China were also touring.

We needed to take a potty break before entering the next section so our guide took us around the backside of one of the buildings to this 4 Star Toilet. Hilarious!

Cool lines with the wall, building and background!

The lions guarding the entrance of the temple. The Obwald ladies in front of the women's side...

...and the Obwald guys in front of the men's side.

Second family photo op... It so funny because people would wait for us to take our photo then shove their kid in. Jumping Joy was getting very tired of it after about an hour and many photos later.

Oh look, there's more!

Can you see that baby bum? This is the first one I spotted. I was on the hunt all trip to get pics of those split pants. I figured if every other family wanted to take pictures of my kids I could get a few of random folks, I would never see again, too. ;) This boy just had no pants at all.

Beautiful gardens.

These trees are (L) 300 years old and (R) 600 years old!

Another awesome red door.

After the Forbidden City we headed to a rickshaw ride set up by our guide. This ride through the back alleys of common Chinese homes took us to lunch. Our lunch was being served at the home of some locals that have a small restaurant out of their house. This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip! The ride was so fun and the food was AMAZING!

Along the back alleys.

Don't you love that cart? This would be the color of my cart!

Our private dining experience.

Ok

This was my favorite dish from that lunch. (cabbage and bok choy)

They just kept bringing more dishes. We asked our guide if she ordered and she said that they cook what they want and bring it out...and it's always a lot.

Alice told the man that it was C-dub's bday so they brought him a special bowl of...you guessed it...noodles! On your birthday they give noodles to symbolize longevity. That was so nice of them!

And then Alice, our darling guide, pulled out this panda bear for C-dub. (He loved it and slept with it every night after that. He wouldn't even share with Lightening Baby when we got her.)

After our lunch, before we headed back on the rickshaws we needed to use the toilet. Well this was it the moment we had wondered about...a squatty-potty and without doors to boot. In we went to the public potty for that neighborhood. That's right that whole section of houses has no indoor plumbing so they go here, next to each other. My girls were NOT INTO THAT...luckily no other neighbors needed to go just then. We survived and it was back for some photos at the lunch house in their beautiful  courtyard.

It was a beautiful and modest home with fun and functional features.

These are pigeon nests. This family races pigeons. Yep, they race them against other families. They even have trophies (see below). When the birds do not need their nests they hand them on this wall. I loved what it looked like!

Another great wall color!

Back on the rickshaws and onto our next tour.

Another baby bum spotted 10 o'clock. Nothin' there...just cheeks.

Off to Tiananmen Square after lunch. It started to rain. It felt so good!

This man was funny. He was staring and talking to his son as we passed. (By now we were getting used to the pointing, stares and whispers.) His son told our guide that he had never seen a white person before. Remember that people from all over China were visiting these famous monuments too. Then they asked to take a picture with us. He was sweet.

It was much less crowded at Tiananmen Square. The openness was welcome! We were getting a little claustrophobic at the last place.

This was a large and very detailed sculpture of men of different levels in society (if I remember correctly). So cool!

This was the largest TV type screen I have even seen. It was playing a video highlighting different regions in China. Beautiful cinematography! And so clear!

This was the first wedding entourage we spotted. It was fun playing our own version of I Spy in China. I did not expect people to be doing wedding photos every day of the week. This girl did not look happy. How could she be? It was about 95 degrees and had just rained... :(

Bum spotting!

The ancient architecture was amazing, or course, but I did not expect their modern building to be quite so cool.

For Uncle Todd :) Their store is the entrance to the huge mall. You have to walk through to get into the mall. 

The place gets even more packed at night. This is an outdoor market. Crazy stuff on skewers!

We didn't eat, just looked. :/

The lit up building in the back is our hotel.

When we got back to our hotel after a very fun and very full day this was waiting for C-dub. A large box of 4 tins of cookies with a letter addressed just to him wishing him a happy birthday. They really make a guy feel special! So cool!