Tourist Saturday

Caelyn enjoyed breakfast this morning...they had pork dumplings on the
breakfast buffet! After breakfast, we headed on our tours. We toured
with another couple using Holt as their adoption agency. They are
from San Diego. We started at Tiananmen Square. Lots of people,
despite the cold. Our instant hand warmers were a hit. We even had
enough to share with the other couple. We saw the Chinese equivalent
of our U.S. Capital, Mao Tse Tung's mausoleum, and the Chinese
National Grand Theater--shaped like a large silver sphere. Then we
headed to the Forbidden City. Again, crowds everywhere. Caelyn
wanted to be carried several times within the Forbidden City. She was
pretty much quiet and shy the whole morning. We did get to see a
different part of the City this time. We toured the emporer's living
quarters and bedrooms. Otherwise, much of it was as we had remembered
from 4 years ago. Sorry, Nicholas, the lions were a little too large
to sneak back home. We had forgotton about all the agressive street
sellers. Fortunately, Joel, our new friend from San Diego, took the
brunt of most of the sellers. He was good at resisting. After the
Forbidden City, we headed to have lunch. Lydia, our tour guide,
arranged lunch for us at a local restaurant. We had a variety of
dishes. Caelyn dug right in and enjoyed her lunch. Again, she didn't
talk much. After lunch, we headed to a silk store, where they showed
us how they harvested silk from the silk worm and showed us the entire
life cycle of the silk worm. Did you know you can harvest over a mile
of silk thread from one silk worm pod? Amazing! From there, they
showed us how they make silk blankets. Of course, the ulitmate goal
was to sell us something. We decided on some silk scarves.

That concluded our day of touring. Guess what it was doing as we came
out of the silk store...it was snowing!! Not much, but it was
snowing. We came back to the hotel. As soon as we got back in the
room, Caelyn was back to being herself--silly, giggly and talkative.
She's been that way all afternoon as we've played several rounds of
UNO. For some reason, the ladies are ganging up on Daddy!

We planning on an early supper and getting to bed at a decent time so
we can head to the Great Wall tomorrow with Dean, Megan and kids. We
can't wait.