We're having a great time here. We went on a tour of the "Summer Palace" which is a huge, ancient palace and grounds – something like 600+ square acres! The Summer Palace was the place where the emperor and empress (is that word??) went to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. The buildings and grounds are beautiful. I think that the ceilings in most (all?) buildings are covered in paintings. Matter of fact there is a long walkway which has so many paintings that it's considered the largest (longest?) art museum in China (Beijing?). The grounds are gorgeous – lots of big, old Cyprus trees.
There's a big lake with an island in the middle. We took a "Dragon Boat" over to the island (see Danny's blog for a picture of a Dragon Boat).
Trivia for the day: If I remember what we were told, the first three emperors were really good – they were concerned with the welfare of the Chinese people, and tried to do things to better the living conditions in China, tried to help the people, etc. However, after the third dynasty, the emperors were only concerned with their own well being and just lived a life of luxury and didn't care about the people. The people, however, revolted and overthrew these dynasties.
I also want to say that our CHI (Children's Hope International) tour guide (Cindy) is just fabulous. She is very friendly and knowledgeable, and has been extremely helpful. Besides taking us on these big tours, she also took us to the aquarium on Wednesday, and when shopping, she's able to tell us a good deal from a not-so-good deal. ;-)
The people in China have been very friendly. I wasn't sure what to expect, but we have been welcomed with open arms. It's fun to try to communicate with people who don't speak English (and I can't speak Mandarin). One time I had to go to the local shopping center (the Carrefour) to buy some swimming goggles for Danny, and I had to try to explain to one of the sales people, who didn't speak English. I used body language (like pretending I was wearing goggles, and diving into a pool) to say I was looking for goggles for swimming. I felt like I was playing charades, but it worked! LOL!
We've been taking a lot of pictures, and we want to get them up on the blog. However, it's interesting to see that a bunch of the Internet is blocked here in China such as blogs (blogger, blogspot, etc) as well as Facebook. It is possible to post to blogspot using their email option – you need to configure your blogspot settings to accept posts via email, then you email to a special blogspot account, and the text and images are automatically posted to your blogspot blog. This works, but has a few limitations such as not being able to edit the post after sending it to the blog, and you cannot configure where your images will appear in your post (they appear at the top, above the text). I've also discovered that you're also limited to the size of the email; I've found that sometimes I can only include 2 pictures, maybe 3. However, Flickr seems available, so I think I'll put our pictures up there and just put text on the blog (or text plus a couple pictures).
Hmmmmmm... When we get home, maybe I'll setup a blog site (strictly for people doing international adoptions) on one of my servers... Of course, that's presuming that I'll have time – we are adding a sweet little baby girl to our family, but I'm *sure* I'll have tons of free time on my hands......... ;->
Speaking of taking pictures, we experienced something we didn't expect – Asian people came up to us and wanted to take Danny's picture! After the third or fourth time of this, I asked our tour guide what this was all about, and she thought that the tourists were Chinese people from different parts of China, and they were fascinated with Danny's cute smile and his locks of curly hair.
Also, at one point he was sitting down doing some drawings (for homework), and people stopped and stared at him. Danny is left handed, and (as our tour guide explained) most Chinese are right handed (they are taught to be right handed even if they are predisposed to being left handed) so it is very unique to find someone writing or drawing with their left hand. Again, a bunch of people took Danny's picture, and some even posed with him. Very funny!
Tomorrow we're going to the Temple of Heaven and Hutong village (prounounce hoo-tone) and will see the Chinese Golden Acrobats.
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