Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Nate!

Nate turns 3 while we are in China. This is the number three in chinese text. We plan to have a little party for him when everyone in our travel group arrives.

Drum tower

Ok, going to try this again. Just sending the video to see if this is the problem. This is the drum show we saw from the drum tower located in the hutong. I will update more if this works.

Olympic stadium

I have been trying to blog a bit today but my posts have not been showing, I am going to give it another try.
Today we went to HardRock Cafe and had lunch. It was Yummy, it was a beautiful place and we had the place all to ourselves (a little secret is to go for a late lunch and the place is very slow).

Then we took a taxi to the olympic park. Wow, this park is huge! I have a feeling I will be saying that a lot while here in China. We saw the birds nest, water cube, the main causeway, and the torch. It was a bit surreal, seeing it on TV and now being there in person, getting to see the size and colors-- it was all so cool.

It was cold and you will notice we are bundled up and Nate is pretty unhappy having his picture taken. We arrived around 4pm and the sun was setting, it was perfect timing because shortly after we arrived the lights came on in the nest and cube.

Big sightseeing day tomorrow, then on Sunday we meet our girls. Can't believe we are so close to meeting them, it IS really going to happen. This has been an amazing journey.

Tidbit:See that last picture with the funky tower with the IBMlogo, that is a 7 star hotel built for the olympics. I didn't even know hotel star system went that high, apparently there are only two in the world, the other is in dubai. This one has a giant screen that is 4 stories tall in the middle of the building.

Squattie Potty

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> Yep, encountered my first Squattie potty yesterday. Ladies, I have to tell you, not as bad as I thought. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

> (getting picture from yesterdays sight seeing ready to upload real soon)

Our view

Just a quick update to say Hi! Skype is not working so far. We can see the other just can't hear each other. It may be a gov't control thing.
Jet lag is getting better, last night I crashed really early and we were all up at 2 am. I hope by tomorrow we are on schedule, or we could be sleeping at dinner:-).

The sun came up and was beautiful shining on the buildings. The smog seemed light today, it was cold but clear. Here are a few pics of our view from our room.

Shopping

Went to carrefour, a store much like walmart. It's a two story building, it sells clothes, household goods and food. It's big and colorful, decorated for Chinese new year. Nate fell asleep as soon as we entered the building. Every person we passed looked at him and smiled, he was still in his coat and hat and he was rock'n a pair of sunglasses. I think people found his glasses humorous.

It was so much fun just looking at all the products in the store. Recognizing the shape and color of items but not able to read the Chinese writing on them. Very popular items had both US and Chinese on them like Tide, Evian, coke and Cadbury. One strange thing was the raw meat was out in bins, people were touching and inspecting pieces then throwing it back in. That would never fly in the US!(pic 3)

Going sightseeing tomorrow, learning to make dumplings, eating our creations for lunch, go to the summer palace, visit a hutong--an old village, then peking duck for dinner. Lots of outside stuff tomorrow, pray we stay warm!
Here are a few pictures of our trip to the store.

We are here

We made it to our hotel. We got in around 2pm. The Beijing airport is huge and beautiful. As you walk to get your luggage they use equipment to scan your body temp. To make sure you were not coming into the country sick. We got our luggage and found our guide and we were off on the drive to our hotel. We got many many looks as we walked with Nate, I think they must believe he is chinese.

It is cold here, about 23degree when we arrived. While driving in, there were many huge 20 story buildings that were all homes/ apartments. The sun sets at around 3:30pm, it was dark by 4:30pm. It made for staying up really hard. We have been up since about 2am. Last night Nate was asking us, PLEASE, can I go to bed...that's a first. Off to get breakfast now.
I will update more later.
Love to all
Kare

Taking off

We are on the plane ready to go. More later!

Ready

we are ready. the count down clock is ticking and we have t-minus 9 hours until we board our plane. ohhh, man are we excited. i can't wait to get to china!

love to all our family and friends!