Uh.. Friday. Beijing.

Man, I’m getting tired of visiting all of these places. I want to just shop for a day or something. We have all of these scheduled things, which is convenient, but I’ve stopped fully paying attention at everything. Plus, we’re in the middle of one of China’s biggest holidays, which means that there are a million (literally) people visiting the same places at the same time as us. Today at the summer palace, I could barely stand still when we stopped to listen to our tour guide, Thomas. The people jostled me around a ton. That thing was big. No wonder it was a palace.. there was so much ground to cover on just.. the grounds. It had this sweet lake too.

This morning was the great wall. It makes kind of a big “U” and crosses the highway twice with the parking lot in the middle, if that makes sense. Well anyway we started on the left side of the U and walked all the way around it to the other side (almost coming full circle) but when we got there (and to the other side of the parking lot), we couldn’t find the bus and whatnot. We finally found it and Thomas, and he was really surprised. Apparently, in all his years, he’s never had a group walk all the way around the U. (and he’s been doing this since 1992!) That surprised us! It almost killed me, but it was a good workout. My clothes look like they’ve been through a lot though. Very dirty.

The acrobatic show was tonight too. It was so cool!! Like a Chinese Cirque de Soleis, my cousin said. I’ve never seen them, but I know that these guys were so cool! Uncle Jerry couldn’t bear to watch them and made us leave early and blamed it on me. I merely said earlier when we were talking about leaving early that we could if we had to in order to beat the rush. Later, UJ wanted to leave and so he blamed it on me when the rest of the group protested. Ugg. Figures.

Tomorrow is Tien Ah Mien Square and the Forbidden City. I hope we have time to shop afterwards! Lately, these days have been so draining that I just pass out when I get back. I have to find a good place for stuff though.. I haven’t found anything for most of the people closest to me!! Maybe Dad and I will just skip the Forbidden City or something.

I go home the day after tomorrow. Weird. I miss Hong Kong…

Good grief. I can’t find my contact solution. This is not good. I think I must have left it at one of the seventy hotels we’ve gone to. Good thing I brought one other pair. If I can somehow save the solution the contacts came in, I should be ok. Ai ya. Not cool.

That’s one thing you can’t buy here.. contact solution. We had a hard enough time finding diapers for Kaya.

I hate how the internet costs money. I want to just check my email and then shower and then come back and maybe upload my pics but I can’t unless I want to pay for an extra 3 hours of internet service. Poopy. Guess we’ll see.

Too bad Uncle Jerry is in such a hurry when we find places to shop. Things are either too expensive, not what we’re looking for, or we get hustled out too quickly by UJ to buy anything. This is killing me!

It is such a pain in the butt to get a drink of water here. Easier on the streets than in a restaurant. The water is all crappy so you have to specifically ask if you want water or ice because it has to be fetched from a bottle of water or special filter or something. Annoying.

The only thing more annoying is people oogling over Kaya. I’d hate to be a celebrity! You’d think it wouldn’t be so bad, having people fawn over you everywhere you go, but it sucks!! And it’s not even me! Kaya enjoys it for the most part, but all the looks, and the baby talk in your direction, and the pictures with random people, etc. all get really old after a week solid.

Thomas didn’t make a very strong impression at first on me. However, he is pretty smart. He says “uh” after almost every single word he says, his glasses are never clean, and he smells funny sometimes, but he’s a nice guy. He actually was embarrassed to tell us that he has his MBA because he thought it was embarrassing for him to have his master’s and yet be working as a tour guide. We reassured him that tour guiding is a perfectly fine occupation, and he had a long chat with UJ (Uncle Jerry.. easier than typing it all the time) about the stock market on the way to the great wall. Turns out that last year he invested every penny he could find in the stock market and his family thought he was nuts.. but he was pretty sure of himself. In February, China’s stock dropped, actually influencing the US’s economy, but it picked up and is now at record highs in both China and the US. Up until this year, China didn’t have taxes on their stock. Thomas made over 200% back from what he invested.. and didn’t have to pay any taxes on it! I thought UJ was going to fall over. He was jealous. Hahaha

He’s been nuts tonight, that Jerry Hong. Hyper, almost. Talking to us about shrinking people and heating the earth with heat from the earth’s core… hahaha if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was on something. But that’s just him. Randomly nuts.. and loving it the whole time.

Anyway, I think I’m going to go shower. And I’ll find the pics when I get back. Poo: There are a lot. I won’t be able to find the ones I want!

I’ll post pics later.

Dad' s sleeping.

P.S. I hope I make my flights ok! I have to go from Beijing to IF completely by myself, not to mention I switch from United to Delta halfway there. And I don't know what the process is really when coming back. Do I have new boarding passes? I don't have any, as far as I can see. Oh boy. I better go ask some questions.

But I'm stinky! Time to really shower now!!

Miss everyone!

lauren