First Day in Beijing

What a fun day! On our schedule today was a trip to the Great Wall and an acrobat show. While we were waiting on our driver this morning we decided to explore around our hotel a bit. We ended up meeting a fun guy whose english name was Allen (unfortunately I can't remember his Chinese name). He is an artist and he just finished at the university in the Spring. He gave us a little mini tour of the part of Bejing we were in and showed us a Hutong that was about 350 years old. (We are going back today because I forgot to take a picture). We also went to his art studio and met his teacher and he showed us some of his work and explained some of the meanings of the other art work displayed.



"Allen" the artist with his masterpieces




Allen's teacher drawing Andersen and Paige's name in bamboo leaves





After our fun morning adventure we went on to the Great Wall. On the way we enjoyed watching all of the people around us as well as all of the different kinds of buildings and homes along the way. Andersen's main goal was to try and find a traditional rice farmers hat and we did at the Great Wall. We are learning very quickly that most prices you have to haggle down quite a bit. After buying the hat and promising the sales woman that we would come back and look at the rest of her items for sale after we were done on the wall, we started the climb. It was a pretty hazy day so it was hard to see the wall for a while on our way up. Once we finally got up near the top we were able to enjoy the real beauty of it and all of its surroundings.











The weather was great yesterday but pretty muggy so we decided to take a faster way back down so we took the slide. Who knew there was a slide down the Great Wall?! How fun! Paige and I rode together and she was screeching and laughing the whole way down. James and Andersen rode down together at a more conservative speed :-)


Once we were at the bottom we had our first "tourist" mistake. There were some guys dressed in fun outfits that told the kids they could come take pictures with them. So of course I thought, how festive let's do it! Well we took our fun pictures and said thanks then they explained they wanted us to pay them....a lot. I said no not that much but we ended up paying them more than we wanted and walked a way learning our first tourist lesson, not everyone just wants to take fun pictures :-) We did feel better that several locals thought those guys were crazy for trying to ask for as much money as they did too. But here are our fancy pictures...







After that we went back to where Andersen bought his hat and Paige found a panda that she wanted so we had fun talking the woman down from the "special price just for us" of $30 to the $5 the panda was worth. And then we felt like we had the full experience of the Great Wall and headed back to our hotel.











The jet lag finally set in on our hour break at the hotel but we decided to stay awake so we would be able to sleep at night. So on to the acrobat show we went...you can ask Andersen which part was his favorite, he feel asleep after the first 5 minutes :-) Paige loved the show and was most amazed by the 8 motorcycle guys driving around at the same time in a metal ball. The kids both slept on the short drive back to the hotel and decided that we didn't need dinner, we just needed sleep. So we were all fast asleep by 7:30...and now it's 4:00 am and Paige, James and I are all awake :-)

Tomorrow we have an open day with no driver or guide so we are going to see what kind of adventures we can find.

Location:E Chang'an St,Beijing,China