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Crazy busy day. I didn't like it at all. We left the house at 9:00 a.m. and didn't arrive home until almost 7 p.m. Poor kids. We drug them all around town and they were such troopers about it. But, at least our Visa situation has been fixed and we should be able to stay in the country without a problem.



Since I cannot seem to find the time to just sit down and journal about our Beijing trip, I thought I could post photos here and there are write about them. This is our family pic from the Great Wall. The scenery was potentially beautiful, but as you can see in the pic it seemed the pollution from Beijing even reached all the way out there. It was a bit depressing to realize how severe the pollution problem really is. The Wall was amazing. The section that we visited was quite busy and quite steep. In order to climb up, I had to tilt my body forward quite a bit. It was like mountain climbing. On the way down, Petey decided he wanted to run. He tried to stop him, but once he got started the momentum just carried him forward. He finally was able to stop himself without falling down. There is a specific sound Chinese women make when they are worried about a child hurting themselves. It sounds like "I-yo!" We heard quite a lot of "I-Yo"s when Petey went running down the Great Wall.

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Ok, ok, one more picture, then I MUST go to bed. We stayed up late watching episode 3 of Lost. That was a really bizarre one, don't you think? Here is Connor on a camel at the Great Wall. I like this pic for several reasons:

-Connor really wanted to sit on that camel. It is a fairly common tourist trap, the camel (horse, goat, etc) that you can sit on and pose for a pic with. You also have the option of dressing up in various types of traditional Chinese costumes while posing for the pic.

-You can see how very crowded the wall was in the background of this pic.

-You can also see how beautiful the colors of the leaves were. I love Autumn.

Of course, Zack and Petey also had to sit on the camel too. But those pics shall be for another day.

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While in Beijing, we visited a famous teahouse. Of course, for those of you who are familiar with Mormon doctrine, you realize this is a bit ironic for our family. We didn't drink any tea, but had orange juice instead. This tea house was amazing, though. Not only has it been visited by many famous people (including George Bush, Sr.) but it puts on a fantastic show. The tea servers are like some sort of martial art specialist. They pour the hot water throught this kettle with a super long spout. They twirl the kettle every which way, and pour with thier bodies contourted in many different poses. Very cool