Bejing Day Two

So, it's been another HOT and FULL day in Beijing.  I believe the thinking is that if Uncle Zhou exhausts us, we will have no choice but to sleep at night, so we will adjust to the time change more quickly.  Well, we're exhausted, so hopefully I will sleep tonight. 

 

We started the day with a tour of Ti'ananmen Square and Forbidden City.  Lots of walking, lots of people, lots of heat.  The protective mama bear in me came out while trying to get Madelyn to the bathroom as we had to fight our way, literally pushing and shoving thru crowds of people who were pushing and shoving us.  There is no such thing as mister nice guy in this type of situation.  The number of people was overwhelming at times, especially due to the heat.  But it was amazing to see, and the girls thought it was pretty cool to be standing in the middle of a place they had studied in history.  We had a funny experience while taking a group photo.  Chinese mother's kept running up and putting their kids in the picture with us,  random people just stopped and took our photo, and several teenage girls asked to be photographed with Anna.  It was a bit paparazzi-ish. Zhou worked his magic as usual, getting us everywhere, producing ice cold water bottles seemingly out of thin air just when we thought we couldn't take another minute of the heat, getting one of the people in our group easily back to the hotel when they weren't feeling well.  It is nice to be in such wonderful hands and not have to worry about  a thing.

 

We left the Forbidden City and visited a hutong, which is an older neighborhood in Beijing.  We got to ride around in rickshaws, had a history lesson on the neighborhood, had lunch at the home of a local family,  experienced the tenacity of the street vendors, and…drumroll please….Madelyn used her first squatty potty!  She wouldn't let me take a photo for the scrapbook, though.

 

Our final stop of the day was the silk factory.  We got a lesson on the process of making silk, which was fascinating, and then we shopped for anything you can imagine made of silk.  Very fun.     

 

Right now the girls are resting before we head to the hutong where Holly and Marc are staying and do the whole street market and street food thing.  Holly has tempted Ty with the promise of yummy lamb kabobs.  Not sure what the girls and I will be eating!