Thursday, December 3, 2009
A DAY OF INSPIRATION

After seeing the acrobats last night with their stunning displays of sound, color, art and athleticism, I was already feeling inspired when I woke up this morning. Our mixing up of the sleeping arrangement was a success as we all slept better. I feel rejuvenated. Today proved to be the coolest of our sightseeing days yet in Beijing. Not that any of the others were not good, but today was unbelievably COOL.

We met in the hotel lobby at 9:30 and were heading to the Temple of Heaven. “Another Temple?” I thought. After a while all of the temples last time started to look the same to me. I have to confess that I wasn’t too psyched at the prospect of another Temple tour. Boy did I turn out to be WRONG!!!

The tour got off to an auspicious start. Before we even got to the gate we were bombed by people trying to sell stuff. None of it looked terribly interesting to us. Usually we just blow it off and politely say “No Thanks”. About halfway to the gate one of the vendors decided to be a little bit more aggressive and jumped in front of my wife and children who were holding hands and stopped them. He simply wouldn’t take no for an answer and wasn’t moving. After 3 or 4 more “No’s” and him not letting us by I’d had enough. He was chattering away in Chinese and gesturing so I don’t think he saw me coming around. In true Fessick style I basically picked the guy up and moved him out of our way. “Boo” I said, which is Mandarin for “No.” I could see he was startled. He craned his neck back to look at me. I could see it in his eyes, “Ok ok………….. please don’t squash me Fessick”. What can I say, these guys are slightly over aggressive. We walked forward about 20 yards to the entrance. I looked over my shoulder to see the man still standing there looking at us as if to say, “What just happened?.” Sorry dude, don’t mess with my family.

Once we were in the gate our day started to get better. We saw people exercising all over the place. We got some of the small brushes used to make Chinese characters on the pavement with water. We also saw some people doing a cool workout using swords. SWORDS!!! Yeah!!! That’s COOL!

We also met along the way a bunch of Chinese accordion players. They were reading music from a book that I have learned from one of Amalie’s Chinese videos is the version of Chinese solfeggio. They were singing and having a good time.

It was cold, but we were bundled up. I would guess it was about 20 degrees Farenheit. We got to the main part of the Temple of Heaven. It is a place where the emperors used to come to pray 3 times a year. At the center of the Temple there was a stone on which it was said “A person standing and talking to God would have a particularly loud and sonorous voice”. Now that’s what I’m TALKING ABOUT!!! An amplifier for talking to GOD. I had to try. I hope the thing really works!!! I was tempted to yell at the top of my lungs but I had a vision of the movie DUNE. Since I have a voice that your might well already describe as “particularly loud and sonorous” I thought silent prayer might be a better approach. It seemed like yelling so loud that people blow up might be a bad idea! :0)

Amalie was busy pushing around Ethan (a fellow Beijing adoptee) in his new stroller. Todd (his dad) seemed content to let her do the work. Ethan was all smiles. The Temple grounds were very large and at about the halfway through mark Sophie was running out of gas. I carried her the rest of the way. I am going to have one seriously big left bicep at this rate. Anyway it will be good for moving Chinese vendors.

Next we rolled up on the Echo Wall. Because of the radius of the wall you could stand very far away from someone and hold a conversation by simply speaking at the wall. I was amazed that I could speak at a normal volume and hear Grace from nearly 100 years away. A very large, old school telephone! Chinese people build stuff to LAST! Most of the structures we saw today were over 700 years old. Even the modern buildings are mostly steel and stone. Man made marble and granite is EVERYWHERE! It makes the things I own seem very temporary. I’ve been joking with Todd that we should move to Beijing and become brick barons.

After we had walked through the temple we loaded back into the bus and headed to a local silk factory and market. We got a great tour which went through the entire life cycle of the silk worm and then showed us the process by which the thread is extracted from the cocoon. We got a silk comforter and duvet cover and some pillow cases (We finally found one we both agreed on after a four year search…Yeah! And it was a bargain) I also got 6 brightly colored 24 inch square silks that are PERFECT for magic effects. Oh yeah, the magic is ON!!! When I get back I’ll start working on our new show, “The Classics of Magic.” I think I may try to saw Sophie in half!

After the market we came back to the hotel and dropped off our stuff and headed for lunch. We had the afternoon off to chill out in our room which was good because we walked our feet into oblivion this morning. Our little charmer had Amalie laughing so hard at facial expressions at one point that it got contagious. We all had a huge belly laugh that lasted at least 10 minutes. Sophie would scowl at Amalie, and then wink. It was truly cute!

I got to read my Andre Agassi book for a couple of hours while the girls played and did some writing. Life is tough. Too many more days like today and I’ll have to reconsider coming home! Now, where to go for dinner? Decisions, decisions. Maybe we can find some place for some good Chinese food…

We did have a yummy Chinese dinner…Hurrah…We found one in China…grin. On the way back in, Sophie noticed a carving up on the second level of the hotel. We went up to get a picture with the girls and were surprised when Sophie ran ahead of us, knelt down and began to bow and pray. We watched quietly for a moment and then she was up and ready for pictures with her sister.

Then it was off to the bathtub and way too much volume in the wild laughter. Now the girls are happily sleeping in their beds and the parents are reading and typing to you all. Goodnight All!

An inspired motivated belly laughed crew,
Brandy, Ted, Amalie and Sophie