Saturday 3/15

Hello all. Today was another great day in China. I actually slept in until the late hour of 5:30am this morning! Not too bad. Much better than yesterday! We all got up and went down for another breakfast. For the first time, the chefs must have learned how to build a fire under the bacon pan! It was cook until done today. I ate about 4 slices. I also learned how to operate the toaster. So I knew today must be a good day!

We loaded up the bus with the other Holt families and headed to the Great Wall. I have seen many pictures of the wall, but none even come close to it in real life. Our pictures will never do it justice. It was awesome. And just never ending! We started by taking a family picture with the wall in the background. I thought that would be a great Christmas card for this year. And then I remembered that Sydney was not with us and we would not want one without her. Kind of sad that we are experiencing all this without her. We climbed around for a couple of hours and then headed back down. At the bottom there were hundreds of booths with vendors basically selling the same things. The vendors were just in our faces all the way down the hill. We obviously wanted to buy a souvenir, but it was a bit intimidating. I didn’t even want to look at there stuff because they would pounce! Also our Holt guide, Les, told us that all things are intended to be bargained for. They would start at about 200 yuan for a t-shirt but a good price would be about 30-35 yuan. We ended up with 4 t-shirts and a book for 400 yuan, which is about $57. So hard to bargain with them when we feel that they could so use the money. We are so lucky to live in the U.S, It makes you wonder why God saw fit to place me there and other people in other places.

We left the wall and went to another restaurant for authentic Chinese lunch. It was good but not as good as yesterday. Everything was served in the traditional Chinese way by being placed on a large lazy susan in the middle of the table and everyone eats family style. They did serve a fish with the head and tail still attached! When that came around my way, I just kept on spinning it!

After lunch we went to a clonnaise (sp?) factory. This is an local art of painting on metal and then firing pieces to make beautiful pottery and other pieces. We went though the factory where they were making them and then did some shopping. We all bought some neat bracelets and also one for Sydney! I really liked this part. It was so impressive to see how they pieces were made. I could have spent a lot of money here and will probably pick up a few more pieces before we head home.

Our next activity was a rickshaw ride to visit a local family living in hutongs. A rickshaw is basically a horse drawn carriage but instead of a horse it is a man on a bike. Wayne and I decided that we had better split up in order to keep the man from keeling over! He pedaled his little legs off to take us to a family’s house in order for us to see how a typical family lives. I cannot ever put into words the things I saw and the feelings that I have about this part. Sometime later I will blog about this but not yet.

That concluded our planned activities for the day. Mike & Debbie joined us again for dinner. They wanted Peking Duck so we went to a local restaurant near our hotel. Ashlyn actually tried some duck, not me however. I did try a sesame chicken dish that had a very different taste to it. Come to find out it had chicken feet in it! Luckily I did not actually eat the feet. I think.
So many things are so different here that it is hard to even communicate it to you. However I absolutely love it in a way that can only be described as a love given to me from God. This is where we are meant to be at this time. I do not know about what or how God will use this love in the future, but I cannot wait to find out. (Calm down Mom.)

Tomorrow morning we finally get down to adoption business. We meet in the morning to get info and pics of our children. An interesting thing was said today by our Holt rep. He asked the name of our child and I said Ji Xiang Shi. He laughed and said, “Oh yes, she will give you a run for your money!” That was all he said. What does that mean? One can only guess. I should find out in the morning if I am indeed adopting the chief demon child of China!

I still cannot get pics to post. I will try to go down to Starbucks tomorrow to post there if we have time. Remember we cannot see your comments on the blog or even the blog itself here so please email us at crosseyedmama@gmail.com!