We have really made it here!!!!
Beijing is a VERY westernized city, in fact, it has been hard to believe we are on the other side of the world. The people have been very friendly and gigggle when we say hello back to them. We have been able to walk around the area of the hotel today and have been to several stores and saw a farmer's market - complete with butchering chickens, live fish, vegetables and fruits we have never seen and people cooking in front of us. We were the only ones in our group out wandering and we are so glad we did. Our limited Chinese has come in very useful and the people haeve been very patient with us and seem to be able to understand us.
Ther is a lot of air pollution ( no blue sky - just hazy), but they have people around all day picking up trash so the streets are very clean. There is small river -, the Yang Ye, that runs behind our hotel that is dirty, but we have seen people fishing and it was fun to walk up and down the sidewalk.
The pictures: the bicycles are everywhere. A lot of people have carts on them to carry trash, recycling or more often fruits etc. We did see ric-shaws but we weren't brave enough yet to take a picture.
the other picture is of the farmer's market - it was the highlight of the day
the third picture is of a floating pizza restaurant on the river behind the hotel.
There is a lot of construction( complete with tower cranes ;o) for the upcoming Olympic games in 2008.
It has been a relaxing day and tomorrow we head to Tianan-men Square, the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and an acrobatic show - we will see if we make it. So far we have adjusted very easily to the time change - probably because we slept so much on the plane as it was dark for the entire 16 hour flight. So right now here it is 7:30 p.m and 6:30 am in Iowa and we are just feeling tired enough for bed.
Hope all is well. Boys we havene't heard from you - email us ALLTFAM@aol.com and let us know the U.S. is still there. 2 days until we pick up Tian.
Tom and Tara
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