Joan here from China. It's Monday
morning here(Sunday afternoon for you). We've experienced some
technical difficulties, like China is blocking Blogspot, but we're
trying to work it out. And we don't have pictures yet, but we'll work
that out too in the next couple of days I hope. Anyway ...
The
plane! Business class! I was so sad to land in China. I hadn't used
all my seat positions or watched all the shows available to me. I had
only called for the flight attendant once! There was so much more
living to be done on that plane, but ... we arrived. We were met and
met up with all the other families in our group - 19 families in all, 60
ish people. We've been broken up into two groups, the happiness group
and the panda group. We are in the happiness group. But after
yesterdays 12 hours on the tour bus, it's clear that for us at least,
that the sad, tired and cranky group might be a better fit. But I get
ahead of myself...
We dined the first night at
the Texas BBQ restaurant in the hotel. The waiters look ridiculous in
cowboy garb and the three piece band was playing taylor swift. I order
steak and am happy. The next morning we're up bright and early and on
the happiness bus to see the Great Wall, with a quick stop at a Jade
Factory. My mom kept saying she wasn't going to buy anything which
lasted all of one minute. She was like a kid in a candy store, jade
everywhere! Where to begin? My dad hates shopping more that anything
and mostly stood around looking pained and hoping my mom was going to
try to bargain and at least get a good price. She did.
The
Great Wall is Beautiful and quite a work out. Tony was in heaven. he
and Sally did the whole thing, about 1/2 hour straight up and back. My
parents and I did about half of it and stopped to rest on this bridge
section. Pretty soon people started to come up to us with their camera.
We assumed they wanted us to take their picture, but no, they wanted a
picture with us in it. As soon as I'd agree, whole families of chinese
would be surrounding me, arms around me, smiling. That lasted until a
black woman arrived, then we were long forgotten and she was the star of
the moment.
Next we went to a big banquet
hall for lunch and then spent the afternoon at the Summer Palace. It's
beautiful, but mostly what I'll remember from the summer palace was the
vendors selling panda hats. At first we refused, but they were so persistent. pretty soon just about every kid in our group had a panda
hat.
Sally was shy for the first couple of
hours, but what finally turned things around for her was this teen beat
magazine that Tony had bought her. Someone spotted that in her bag and
after some initial confusion,
You like Justin Bieber?
Sally(horrified) - No, I don't like him.
It was the ice breaker they needed. Now all the kids sit in the back of the bus and laugh.
At
the end of the day as we were driving back to the hotel, our tour guide
Amber(her American name) said she could see we were all tired, tonight
we should, "go back to room, relax with nice activity, perhaps you shave
your leg and armpit" Perhaps.
Today we're off
to the Forbidden City and Tiananman square. This afternoon is slated
as a "cultural activity" like learning to fold paper, that my mom and I
are going to skip and practice our own cultural activity - shopping.
I hope I can get my pictures up cause they're pretty great.
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