Thursday evening 3-12

Today was our free day to rest up and just relax. Wayne was up at 4:30 and Sarah was up not long after that. You would think that we would have slept forever after traveling so long, but no! Anyways, we had breakfast at the hotel, which was OK. Nothing is really hot, it's all lukewarm. which makes me wonder about food safety. We asked for coffee and were given espresso. This hotel is a French hotel and that is all the coffee they have. I was able to doctor it up enough to tolerate it. Next we met up with Mike and Debbie and Korey and headed to Starbucks for more coffee and internet service. They did not have any vanilla syrup! Odd. Afterwards, we stopped in at a quick shop kind of thing that our guide recommeded for some bottled water. When we checked out it cost us about $30 for 5 big things of Evian water! Wayne about fell over. Needless to say, we will try to ration it somewhat. Next we made all our necessary copies in the business center. We already had made these copies at home but the CCAA needs them on Chinese paper. After that we headed down the street to a shopping area. Unfortunately we had to cross the street to get there. Remember the video game, Frogger? Well we played it China style today. Wayne almost got hit! The right of way goes to cars and there is no way to cross 5 lanes of traffic at once so you have to do it one lane at atime. The stoplight and cross signals are only suggestions, not laws. We figured out pretty fast to just get behind some locals and do what they do. But let me tell you, the country girl in me wanted to RUN! We then found a shop with Olympic stuff in it. Pretty neat and reasonable too. After a few more shops, we headed back to our room to rest up before dinner. We decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe. We had the desk write down where we were going in Chinese and also took a card stating where we were staying at and hopped in a taxi. Holy smokes! I have never been more scared in all my days! You won't believe the video of that trip. Cars, buses, pedestrians, and bikes all sharing the road at the same time. No one is in their own lanes or following lights. Finally I got tickled. All I could do was sit in the back seat and laugh!!!!! We finally made it to the HRC only to find that it was closed for renovations! So what else but back into another taxi bck to the hotel. When we finally made it back, we just decided to have dinner in the hotel dining room. We had pizza and it was pretty good! The girls really liked it and pigged out. Maybe the fear of death by taxi worked up an appetite! We really had fun today! Everything is so different! We are extremely tired and have to be in the lobby in the morning at 8:30 to meet our group. Too tired to proofread so excuse the mistakes! Only 4 days until we get Sydney!