Day 3

Hello everyone, it is technically 3 AM on Day Four for us, but I was so tired last night that blogging was not within the range of my capabilities. It seems, Chinese Chinese food is a little different from American Chinese food and apparently our bodies didn't appreciate the difference. Not to worry though, we will just chalk it up to a new fad diet...maybe the Biggest Loser could use it during sweeps week or something...

ANYWAYS...back to the important stuff,,,like Great Walls, church in Beijing, and Chinese acrobats! Today started off with a church service at the Beijing International Christian Fellowship. I broke my rule of never going to a church without the word church in its name, but it was worth it this time. There were about 300 people in a theater all speaking English and singing songs we were familiar with. It was very cool. It is an international church service and you need to show a copy of your passport or your foreign ID to get in there. According to our guide Sherry it is a registered Christian church with the government and as long as they are registered, they are okay. More to discuss on that later...like after we get back to the states later...

April got to feed her shopping hunger once again after church. This time it was at the Jade factory, and let me tell you, it is more of a Jade dealership than a Jade factory. I think they train these sales ladies at American Used Auto dealers or something, because they are good...We managed to leave with most, but not all, of my checking account intact, but we did get some very nice (that translates to expensive in BJ language) jewelry for Sophie and April and I.

After shopping we had another traditional Chinese lunch...but, based on the earlier conversation, we stuck with the traditional rice and Coke lunch...I can see my target weight from here...



We then spent about an hour trying to kill ourselves by climbing the Great Wall. I am pretty sure they took us to the steepest part of the wall just to watch all of us exhausted Americans struggle to exert ourselves while taking part in the rice and Coke diet. It was all worth it though, when the Chinese Army showed up and they were struggling just as hard as we were to make it to the top. Anyways, we made it to the second guard tower and the views were pretty cool. As you can tell in the pictures, the Chinese "fog" (see Day one) let up a little bit because it was windy, but that also drove the temperature down to something low in Celsius...funny how much colder it feels when you see a thermometer that says 9 degrees in stead of 40 degrees...but I digress...

The night ended with a Chinese acrobat show. I will describe it as Cirque du Soleil without the safety features...These people are flexible and have some crazy senses of balance...and why wouldn't you want to put 10 people on the same bicycle? I am pretty sure that is the future of Chinese mass transportation...who needs to spend money on trains or busses, just give a bicycle to every tenth person and we are good to go...and it cuts back on "fog" too!

Well...I need to try and get some sleep. It may be Day three where you are, but technically it is Day four here and I get my daughter in about 6 hours! Talk to everyone later...

BJ