Saturday in Beijing, September 13, 2008

One day closer to Ava. As Olivia has taken to saying quite a bit here lately, "I want to get Ava now". We all are trying to have patience but it is hard, we are so close.
We met most of our travel group today at the hotel before we departed for a day of touring the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. It is very close to the time of the Moon Festival, so both places were packed with visitors. A lot of us are still suffering quite a bit from jet lag, so it was not long before we were straggling along. Olivia spent most of the day in her stroller, sucking her thumb and mentioning quite frequently that she was ready to go back to the hotel so she could watch her DVD's.
Beijing is much changed from the city is was three years ago. It is a lot cleaner and has a lot less hustle and bustle. One thing that really stands out is the number of bikes is just a fraction of what it once was. The Chinese have gone to great measures to make Beijing very attractive for the Olympics and they have succeeded.
We have met some great people in our travel group. The one picture that we posted today is of Olivia and three other girls that were previously adopted. We met one family that is from Louisa County Virginia and one family from Nebraska that will be with us on Tuesday as we ride the Bullet train to Tiangin.
A few amusing things have happened so far. Right now we are sitting in a Starbucks enjoying good coffee for a change, and the music playing is "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". A bit early but if nobody knows the words I suppose it does not matter. The other thing that was kind of funny happened while still at Dulles Airport. We were behind two Chinese men, one pretty elderly as they made their way to the security checkpoint. At this point, the younger guy told the TSA guard that the elderly guy was proceeding alone and that he could not speak any English at all. Elizabeth took this opportunity to be the Good Samaritan and chimed in with the suggestion that since he was going to Beijing he could just follow along with us and we would get him to his gate. The young man was very appreciative and told the old fellow to follow along with us. He did so and it was very obvious that he would have been quite lost if not for Elizabeth swooping in to the rescue. Once he got to the gate he made it a point to come over to Olivia and give her some tokens of his appreciation. He reached into his bag and handed her a grapefruit, a peach and two hamburger buns. Not wanting to offend, we took all of his gifts even the buns.

That is it for now, it is to the Great Wall tomorrow and a pedicab ride through a Hutong.

P