A Clear Sign

After almost 12 hours of sleep, we woke up feeling great and completely switched over to the time change. We had a wonderful breakfast in the hotel and began to meet people in our adoption travel group. There are sixteen families in our group. One couple, the Nakagumas, have been exchanging emails with us over the last 2 1/2 years (but mostly in the last few months). It is so nice to meet them in person. Another family, the Landinos, are acquaintances of ours through a mutual friend and who by some amazing coincidence happened to decide to adopt around the same time as we did and are here with us also. It is so nice for our kids to be around another family--the Landinos have four bio children ages 6 to 15--and it is so nice to have people we know here with us, too. We learned so much about Chinese culture today, but I will only share here enough to explain our pictures. We started out in Ti'an men Square, a political area, which still had some Olympic displays out. In the middle there is the people's monument which has eight inscriptions for each of the eight people's revolutions in China's history. It was here that we began our celebrity status as foreigners and our children were asked to take many pictures throughout our day with the local tourists. After that we headed to the Forbidden City where we walked for about two hours. On the doors of the buildings are brass knobs which are supposed to give you good luck if you rub them. We had a nice Chinese lunch served family style with a large lazy susan in the middle of each table. Next stop was a pearl factory where we learned so much about fresh water and salt water pearls and were able to purchase some if we chose. Then we went to the Summer Palace. Here we learned about the mythical creature Ching Ling, which has the parts of many animals. Boys are often called Ching Ling, meaning that they can do anything. There was a bronze statue of a Phoenix as well, representing beauty and the emperess. After that we went to a silk factory where we learned how silk is made into cloth and had a chance to purchase silk items. Finally, we had dinner and headed back to the hotel. What a day!