Well, after sleeping away the second half of day 1, day 2 was much more ambitious. We started out by stopping at a jade factory on the way to the Great Wall. It's amazing how similar our cultures can be. There was some cool stuff here but it was mostly a short talk about jade carving and then high-pressure sales trying to get us to buy jade. Just like being in the States. The coolest thing here was a big ship carved from jade. It's the big draw for slack-jawed tourists (like us). Kristin did end up buying a "happy family" ball and a glass ball with Kaia's name painted on the inside.
From there, it was off to the Great Wall. Kristin had been there before and had no intention of repeating her feat of climbing to the first tower on the Wall. She hung out at the bottom with the wife of another adopting couple we were matched up with. I decided to see how far I could get. Surprisingly, my knees and wind held up and I made it to Beacon Tower no. 9. What does that mean, it means that I climbed up pretty high. The following picture is of me in front of the marker with Chairman Mao's words about the higher you climb, the bigger hero you are. I went up to the highest tower you can see in the picture.
I went to the one to the upper right of the corner of the sign.
The view from the top.
From the Wall, we went to the Summer Palace. This is where the Emperor's family hung out in the summer. It was a nice place but chock full of tourists and kind of dirty. Oh well, I'm sure they kept it cleaner back in the Emperor's day..
The Marble Boat
The on-site Buddhist Temple. (Beijing is pretty hazy)
Today is the Forbidden City and then flying to Shanghai around 4:00 p.m. Sometime tomorrow is "Gotcha Day." And then we'll get what we really came for!
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