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View from our hotel room window.<\/p>\n
CCAI has an ingenius way of helping their families get over jet lag.\u00c2\u00a0 They keep them running all over town!We had a wonderful day, full of so many things.\u00c2\u00a0 Buckle up, I’m going to tell you all about them :)<\/p>\n
We met our awesome CCAI guide, Lisa, in the lobby at 9am.\u00c2\u00a0 We boarded our private bus and drove to our first stop, Tiananmen Square. This is the largest city center square in the world…it can hold more than 1,000,000 people.\u00c2\u00a0 Yep, one million!\u00c2\u00a0 Today, it was full of tourists, mostly Chinese people from other parts of China.\u00c2\u00a0 We attracted quite a bit of attention, with some of the locals asking to have their pictures taken with us (especially the 2 adorable little blond-haired boys that are with us!).\u00c2\u00a0 We had a photographer take a group picture of us, in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace (the building with Chairman Mao’s picture on it).\u00c2\u00a0 Here we are posing with the big guy…<\/p>\n
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Countdown to the Olympics, to begin 08\/08\/08 – They picked that date as the number 8 is a good number in China.<\/p>\n
Next, we started walking toward the Forbidden City.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the largest and best preserved imperial palace in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 It has many, many palaces with a total of 9,999 rooms.\u00c2\u00a0 9 is a very lucky number in China.\u00c2\u00a0 We are learning that pretty much everything . . . numbers, animals, symbols, etc, has a meaning over here.\u00c2\u00a0 Our guide told us that if you slept in each room from the day you were born, you’d be 27 years old before you’d have to repeat rooms.\u00c2\u00a0 Wow.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a picture of the emperor’s chair, in his inner court.\u00c2\u00a0 We had to walk through 5 gates and courtyards to finally reach this.<\/p>\n
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If ya’ gotta go, it might as well be in a 4 star rated toilet.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the sign said…they lied.<\/p>\n
Our guide arranged for us to have lunch in an authentic Chinese restaurant downtown.\u00c2\u00a0 For those of you concerned that I might starve over here, let me just say that it was…good!\u00c2\u00a0 Honest!\u00c2\u00a0 Here is a shot from the balcony facing away from the room where we ate and looking down into the bottom of the restaurant.\u00c2\u00a0 They still have their Chinese New Year decorations up, it was gorgeous.<\/p>\n
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The silk factory tour was next.\u00c2\u00a0 We were walked through by one of the employees, and she explained every step in making silk and even had us participate in some things (I helped stretch a batting of silk!). Here they are, doing the stretching. They stretch the silk onto the table below, making layers and layers and layers until they have it thick enough to make the silk batting for the blanket.<\/p>\n
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After making a few purchases at the silk factory (fun!), we were given a rickshaw tour of a Hutong village.<\/p>\n
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Hutong means “small street or lane between two courtyards”.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a neighborhood where all the small homes have their own courtyards, there are no private bathrooms (they use public bathrooms in the neighborhood), and they heat their homes with a special type of coal brick.\u00c2\u00a0 We have felt the cold in Beijing . . . walking to the restroom at night could get VERY inconvenient.\u00c2\u00a0 That is the main reason why most of the “young” people move out of the Hutong’s and into high-rise apartments.<\/p>\n
The highlight of this tour was meeting a retired couple and being invited into their home to meet them and see their living conditions.\u00c2\u00a0 Mrs. Tu and Mr. Wu asked us into their living room and we talked and asked questions through the guide. Their home consists of a living room, bedroom, storage room, and kitchen.\u00c2\u00a0 It was tiny, but warm and they are truly happy.\u00c2\u00a0 I was thrilled to have my picture taken with Mrs. Tu.<\/p>\n
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This is outside their home…notice the Mickey and Minney CNY decorations still up :)<\/p>\n
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Men, playing some unknown game on a Friday afternoon<\/p>\n
Our day ended with an acrobat show at 5:15.\u00c2\u00a0 It was amazing, but most of us at this point were basically trying to stay awake!<\/p>\n
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We were on our own for dinner tonight, so Randy and a few of the others walked up to McDonald’s to pick up dinner and bring it back to the hotel.\u00c2\u00a0 Randy said the hamburger had a very spicy taste to it, very different than US McD’s. \u00c2\u00a0And, rather than pickles on the burgers they put cucumbers. \u00c2\u00a0Abbey, you’d love that!<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, we go to the Great Wall…can’t wait for that, even though the high temp for tomorrow is 35.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just under 40 today.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, we were cold!!\u00c2\u00a0 We also visit the Sacred Way, which is part of the Ming tombs.\u00c2\u00a0 Only about 2 1\/2 days till Lainey!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
View from our hotel room window. CCAI has an ingenius way of helping their families get over jet lag.\u00c2\u00a0 They keep them running all over town!We had a wonderful day, full of so many things.\u00c2\u00a0 Buckle up, I’m going to tell you all about them :) We met our awesome CCAI guide, Lisa, in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}