Holy Beijing Hotness Batman!Let me start with today was hot...we're talking about the sweat dripping from your face, shirt soaked with sweat, on the verge of you beginning to stink hot. Our day started off with a buffett breakfast in our hotel. Typical breakfast foods like aged eggs, salad, congee, fried rice, fried noodles...you get the picture. Actually there were a lot of western foods including bacon, sausage, eggs made to order, pastries, yogurt, and the best...cereal, including cocco crispies. After breakfast we met our guide and the rest of our CCAI group in the lobby. We traveled to Tienanaman Square and the Forbidden City, where I believe about 1 billion of the nations 1.3 billion people were speanding their day. We did get to see the famous Chairman Mao picture and the inside of the Forbidden City, but I have to say that while I was really looking forward to it, I couldn't enjoy it because of the heat. Stinkin' hot is a good description. We have several kids in our group and they looked like they were just melting as we pushed along. Couple that with the people trying to sell you junk at every turn and you have the makings of an interesting morning. We then went to a Chinese resturaunt for lunch, where they kept bringing food out onto a big lazy susan in the middle of the table. Veggies in some kind of sauce, rice, shrimp, shrimp cakes, chicken with bamboo, and the famous Chinese delicacy french fries. Yep, we had french fries for lunch. After lunch we went to a silk factory for a tour of how silk was made (and to try to get you to purchase government made silk...). While they had beautiful items, they were just too expensive for me. Our last tour was of the hutongs on a rickshaw. A rickshaw is a cart you sit in behind a bike. The guy who drove us was the skinniest driver of the bunch and he had the sorry task of pedalling a bike pulling my fat carcass around this old neighborhood on an almost 100 degree day. I did give him a tip, even though it amounted to about .33 American money, because it was the only small bills I had. The hutongs were okay, a bunch of houses and shops in like its own neighborhood. Interesting way of living. After that we were on our own for the rest of the evening so we came back to our room to take showers and then Rob and I went to Pizza Hut for supper. We did go to this big mall so I could buy a calculator (so I can figure out what the heck stuff really costs). Rob described it as the Green Dragon on Crack. For anyone who doesn't know, the Green Dragon is a large outdoor and indoor flea and farmers market near where we live. This mall is just one stand of pretty much junk after another. The good thing is that you can bargain with them, so I paid about $3.00 for my calculator, which is probably too much. We then went to a grocery store and had some good laughs there. Bottled water cost us $.15 each and a bottle of bear was about $1.00, which shampoo was about $6.00 a bottle. Funny enough we did find Snyders of Hanover Honey Mustard Pretzels so I had to buy them...what the heck are the chances that we would find something made about 1 hour from our house over half the worl away. Tomorrow is the Great Wall, the Olympic Village and a Chinese Acrobat show. I will post photos as soon as I can figure out how to get them from my camera to my computer. Keep the comments coming. I can read them in my e-mail but cannot not accept them to post them on blogger, as blogger is blocked here in China. Only 2 more days till we get Kendall!