Friday, February 20, 2009

We are one day closer to Addison! Today was a semi-free day for us. We had a short meet and greet meeting at 10:00 to meet Joy and Shiyan who work for Bethany over here to take care of adoptive families during their time in China; to get our days schedules; get questions answered, etc.

Jen was wide awake at about 5:00 waiting for me to join her like she does at home – making just enough noise so that she won’t be the only one awake. I was able to ignore her subtle way of letting me know that she was bored and wanted to get out of bed until about 7:00. At which time we went downstairs for breakfast. It was amazing! We were able to choose from omelets, french toast, bacon, fresh fruit and many pastries; I went back to the buffet three times. Not much in the way of a Chinese breakfast in what we thought a Chinese breakfast would be, but then again we didn’t try the fish soup or the Congee, at least not this morning.

After the meet and greet we went to a local market and saw many items of food to choose from, but Jen had brought a lot of snacks with so we picked out only a few things including a couple of bottles of Pepsi, a gallon jug of water, and two different Chinese children’s snacks, Jen couldn’t leave without some sort of sweet treat!

We went with another couple to a local Chinese restaurant for lunch only a couple of blocks from our hotel. And as I wrote above about breakfast being amazing, it didn’t hold a candle to lunch, which was awesome!!! The picture of Jen eating fried worms says it all. Actually, they aren’t worms, they are bamboo shoots, but she wanted to get a picture that looked like she was eating worms so she could tell her students that she ate some real exotic food while we were here. After tasting the dish she ordered, it wouldn’t have mattered if they were worms, I would’ve eating them anyway, they came in a pork dish that had great flavor throughout!

After lunch we didn’t just walk straight back to the hotel we went to check out some local shops in a strip mall type setting. Apparently, within the last week or so, Beijing received a couple of inches of snow, something that is fairly rare. During our walk we saw many workers clearing the snow off the streets and sidewalks. They were also trying to melt what little snow remained with water: other workers would come by afterwards and sweep away the water that remained after the snow melted. Can you imagine this type of snow removal in Minnesota? We would have a lot of snow days! Jen and I think they were working so meticulously because of an antique market being set up for the weekend.

This evening we went as a group to an Acrobatic show much like a Cirque du Soleil performance. The performers where all very talented! Someday Addison will be that talented too, just like all of the girls at the Tracy Dance Studio!

We are enjoying our time here and are trying to take in everything that we can during the couple of days that we are in Beijing! Thank you for all of your prayers and support.