Sorry about the poor layout of the pictures. I was experimenting with settings and am not sure how to fix the pictures. The first picture is the Forbidden City seen from out hotel window. The second is the entrance to the Forbidden City (see Chairman Mao's picture). Next we have the famous olympic Bird's Nest. It is really huge and neat to see. Since it is still being worked on, we could not stop and take pictures.
Another photo of the Forbidden City. The detail on the buildings is hard to capture in photos. The second photo is where all the olympic athletes will be housed during the olympics. It is called the Olympic Village.
It has been an interesting couple of days with Meiting. She is becoming more comfortable testing the limits. Yesterday was particularly difficult. She has much to learn about boundaries and acceptable behavior. We are experiencing some regressive behaviors which have been difficult to deal with. It is hard to watch an almost 8 year old act like a 5 year old. We had to change our approach with her because she was becoming impossible to deal with. For some reason I am the authority. I have had to become a bit tougher on her because she doesn't recognise Jeff as an authority but is now beginning to. This made me a bad guy for a couple of days, but I think she getting it now. She is VERY immature but VERY smart. She is catching on very quickly. She also has an amazing advanced ability to manipulate a situation. I think we are getting it under control. When you are not in your comfort zone and many Chinese people are giving you a mean look it is hard to know what to do. We have spent the last 2 days focusing on this and we think we are on our way to getting it under control.
Yesterday was a full day of sightseeing. We began at the Tian'an Men Square and walked around a bit. It seemed like a lot of concrete to me, but it was interesting to see Chairman Mao's Mausoleum. It seems big on TV, but the true enormity of its size is hard to explain. Then we walked to the Forbidden City. We can actually see the Forbidden City from our hotel room which is really neat. We liked the Forbidden City except that is is VERY crowded and hot. The buildings have amazing detail and significance. They close off parts at a time so we only saw the middle part. Our guide explained that it has 9,999 and 1/2 rooms. If a newborn baby slept in a different room each night, he would be 27 years old before he managed to sleep in all the rooms. THAT is how BIG the Forbidden City is! Once we finished our tour of the Forbidden City we went to lunch to try Beijing Duck which is the best known dish in north China. The duck is dried and brushed with a sweet marinade. It is roasted over fragrant wood chips. It is carved by a chef and eaten wrapped in a pancake(more like a very thin, soft tortilla), with spring onions and cucumber. The meat is very tender. It was not my favorite dish but I was glad I tried it. Jeff enjoyed it more than me. Then we headed to the Great Wall of China. The word "great" is such an understatement! We drove 1 hour out of the city and the transformation was dramatic. We went from city and flat land to mountains. I won't even try to find the words describe it because I know I couldn't do it the justice it deserves. I was sad that we couldn't climb very far. Mei was giving us such a fit at this point, we only could see a little. At one point during the short climb the steps were almost vertical. The hard part is that each step is a different height. You have to step carefully. Going up is much easier than coming down! This is NOT for someone with weak knees or issues with heights. It was an awesome sight!
We came back to the hotel with shot nerves and weak knees. It will take a full day of rest to recover. We had barely enough energy left to cook noodles in the room. I will try to get back on my daily posts to the blog.
