Another busy day!

Today was our busiest day yet. Our day started at 4 a.m. with a trip to Tiananmen Square to see the flag raising at sunrise followed by a trip to a local park to learn Tai Chi at 7 am. OK, OK, Tom was the only one to go to the flag raising, but he woke me up when he was getting ready at 3 am!

After the morning activities, we visited the Bridge of Love Adoption Services (BLAS) offices where the staff put on a wonderful presentation for the girls. They even got to do some caligraphy in the big boardroom! They all had a lot of fun.

After lunch, we finally got to go to the zoo to see the pandas. This had been something the girls have really been looking forward to (this and the Great Wall tomorrow). It was quite amazing to actually see the pandas in real life. They look just like all the stuffed animals the girls have - they are so cute!


From the zoo, we went to a Hutong area (backstreets), where we got a rickshaw tour of the residential streets of China and a tour of a local family's home. This was quite the experience for all of us. The homes in the Hutong are built around a courtyard. Its like having your backyard in the middle of your house. It was really neat!


We only got about 1 hour to rest at the hotel before we headed out for a traditional dinner of Hot Pot (the girls ate very little) and then on to the Chinese Acrobat show. It was fantastic! You would not believe what these acrobats can do - Avery's eyes were glued to the stage for the whole show (even though she was up at 6 am this morning). She was competely fascinated with the act.


So now I'm packing our suitcases because we leave Beijing tomorrow. I can't believe our 4 days here are almost over already. The time has flown! We head to the Great Wall and then on to Chengde. I will try to post again tomorrow, but I will have to figure out the internet thing again. Hopefully, it'll be as easy as this hotel was.

Hope everyone is doing well.