Pictures from Beijing....

I(I had actually attempted to post this before we went to sleep last night, but my pictures files were too big, so I'm trying again after saving the pics at smaller size; here's the original post.)   Well, we started the day with the breakfast buffet at our hotel.  They had "traditional" breakfast foods (bacon, eggs, pancakes, cereal) along with alot of Chinese food. It was interesting, but good.  We then started our very long day of site seeing!  First, it was Tienanmen Square (very hot & crowded!!!!), then the Forbidden City (also hot & crowded, but awesome to see; it was HUGE!!!).  We crammed those two places into about 3 hours!  Alot to see in such a little amount of time!  We then went to a silk factory, and the to a Cloisonne factory (very cool!) were we also ate lunch (yummy traditional Chinese food served family style).  Next was my favorite: The Great Wall!!!  Luckily, it was cloudy by the time we got there, which made for a slightly cooler experience!  We did pretty good (better than some in our group, but not as good as alot!)!!!  You can see the section we climbed in the pictures.  We made it to the 2nd tower of that section!  It was VERY steep!  There was a sweaty bunch of adoptive parents on the bus after that trip!  We also got to see the Olympic park (the water cube & the bird's nest)! We finally got back to the hotel around 7:30 pm, and David & I walked to the McDonald's just up the very busy street (the traffic & driving are horrendous here!). It pretty much tasted like McDonald's!  Now we're all packed & ready to leave early in the morning to fly to Micalee's province.  We should get to the hotel around 11:00 AM & should be getting Micalee around 4:00 PM!  That should give us enough time to wash some of these very stinky clothes!  We'll try to post tomorrow night with pictures of Micalee (if we have time)!!!  (Check out the Squatty Potty! Yes, I did actually use that!)