Beijing China

Cool dude

First bubble bath

The market in Xi'An

Madi in her Diaper

A beautiful flower in Xi'An

Madi in my high heels!

The Smog in China...unreal!

Terra Cotta Warriors

Nice Chinese Man

Train ride to Xi'an

The bird's Nest

The train station

The walk from our hotel to the subway and the water cube...very hard to see

Charla and I on the train

The Great Wall of China

Steve took the Zip line down from the Great Wall.

Famous Peking Duck for dinner

Our Picnic on the Wall

The Lama Temple

Acrobat show. Beautiful trees in bloom

Hutong Tour

Forbidden City

We just got back from Beijing yesterday and had a FANTASTIC time!! We cannot believe how many cool things that we did and we had such a good time, just Steve and I touring the city and sights.
This was a vacation we needed! The week before leaving for China turned out to be a bit stressful, Steve had a very scary thing happen to him. Steve went out on a Thursday night with a friend of his, Shawn. Shawn had called to tell him that he had just got a bonus from work and wanted to have a drink. So Steve met him down on Orchard Road ( a very busy street) at 8:30pm. They had a couple of drinks and were about to come home at around 10 and thought they might have one more beer. They lose their memories at about 10:30pm and memory begins to come back around 2:30am. Their drinks were drugged and then they were both beaten up. Nothing was stolen and they are both totally fine now. Steve was hit pretty hard in the face. They found themselves back at Shawn’s apartment where an ambulance and police were called. They were taken to hospital and treated. Steve got 5 stitches in his lip and saw a dentist for his chipped teeth (two teeth, very minor). Steve was home around 5:45am. I was up at this point, waking at 5am and realizing that he wasn’t home, answering the messages that he left on my phone telling me what had happened. Steve took some pain killers and went to bed, I went to school. After talking with our principal and head of school it was decided that Steve should stay home all week due to his appearance. An e-mail went out to all staff and his class parents to explain the situation. Everyone has been amazingly supportive. Steve has spent the last two weeks healing and is just about back to normal, the only thing that is really noticeable now is his eye, the white of his eye is still red, but goes away a little each day. Steve has done very well through all of this, his memory has not returned at all. But he has been very logical about everything, he is not angry because there is no one to be angry at, he is not scared because this could have happened anywhere in the world and he was out having a few drinks with a friend, not being crazy or out for a big night. We are both very thankful that he did not sustain any worse injuries. He is actually thankful that he has no memory and true to Steve, he thinks his eye looks pretty cool!I think the whole event shook my sense of safety more than his. It reminds me that we are not in Kansas anymore and that we need to me more mindful of ourselves. We looked into a police report, it stated…two men taken to hospital, treated and released. The End. The hospital did not take his blood to check for drugs…I was very annoyed, but after speaking to several people, it has been decided that Singapore chooses not to pursue such things because than it would mark up its record and it could no longer boast about being the safest country in the world!
So, needless to say it was a stressful week, but his progress has been amazing. He is totally fine now and is ready to go back to work tomorrow.

We left Friday night for Beijing and arrived on Saturday morning. Madison stayed home this trip, it was so hard to say goodbye and we missed her so much, but the pollution in Beijing is ridiculous and they have some sanitation issues that would have made touring a bit difficult. As much as we missed her, we were thankful that we left her at home. The toilets alone confirmed it!
Saturday morning when we arrived we went to our hotel, checked in and went straight to the “dirt market”. It was fun to explore and we bought a few things. That night we went to the Lao She Teahouse Variety show. It was fun to see many forms of Chinese entertainment. And we ate Chinese sweets…well, Steve ate them and I asked how they were.
The day was very cool, we went to Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. This was very cool, I had taken a course in Chinese history in University, so I am no expert, but it was pretty awesome to be there after studying a bit about what happened. After the Forbidden City we took a rick shaw on a Hutong Tour. A hutong is a Chinese neighborhood of sorts. Very small houses in a packed area, sharing a bathroom for the hutong. Our Rickshaw driver spoke pretty good English and was able to explain a lot of interesting things about hutongs. Hutongs are still lived in by regular/upper class Chinese people. The government wanted to tear them down for the real estate but then realized how much the tourists liked the tours of them and so is now giving them a facelift for the Olympics. After the tour we went down to the lake and had lunch at a rooftop bar. Then we went furniture shopping. Furniture shopping was an adventure onto itself, quite fun, found lots of great things, in the most remote area with very disgusting bathrooms.
After that we went out for a lovely dinner at a VERY expensive restaurant accidently.
The next day we hit the markets, quite fun, bought a few thins. We bought our “North face” jackets and pants for our trip to Nepal next year and a few other treasures. We had lunch at the best burger place ever and continued shopping. That night we met friends from school, who were also in Beijing, for dinner.
The next day we went to the Lama Temple and the Temple of Heaven. Despite the pollution, it was very beautiful as it is currently spring in Beijing and the cherry blossoms are out, as are many flowers.
We ended up having lunch at Pizza Hut…I know, burger joint, pizza hut, brutal while in China, but I just wasn’t up for a gastronomic adventure and I was NOT interested at all in having stomach issues with the toilet situation! We were very bad for eating Western food and not local food, so bad in fact, that after our lunch at pizza hut we ordered a pizza to go to bring with us the next day on our trip to the Great Wall!!That night we went to an amazing Acrobat show! So great, really unbelievable talent.
Wednesday was our favorite day, we climbed the Great Wall of China!! SO COOL! We rented a van and went with our Friends Charla (and her mom and dad) and Jos (and her friend Elisa), we went to the Simatai portion of the wall and made our way up. This was incredible, a wall that has been built over so many years, surrounded the area and can be seen from space, very cool. We climbed up this portion and we were very lucky because there were very few people there, we kind of had it to ourselves. Once we had gone as far as we wanted we sat down and had our picnic. We packed wine…Great Wall of China wine and had lunch. We had our yummy pizza, Charla and her family brought KFC and Jos and Elsia had cold meat and cheese and stuff. Very yummy, so fun to be sharing this experience with friends and sitting, eating a meal together on the Wall…totally crazy!
To top the day off we all went out for the famous Peking Duck meal…this was my only real Chinese meal of the week and it was delicious!Thursday we went and bought our furniture, a closet of sorts, very big, but very nice. We shipped it, along with a few other things, to Singapore, hoping that it will arrive safely in the near future and will fit in our condo!We then went to the Olympic Village and saw the Bird’s nest and Water Cube. You can not get very close as everything is under construction, but very cool none the less. We are looking forward to seeing the Olympics on TV to see how much they actually get done, they had SO much to do and they only have 120 days left until opening ceremonies and athletes will begin to arrive very soon.
Thursday night we took a night train to Xi’An, this was an adventure in itself, good fun! In Xi’An we saw the Terra Cotta Warriors, very cool! A life sized army of Terra Cotta Warriors to guard an emperor’s tomb, all buried 16 feet under ground…sounds like the Emporor was a bit insane to me! They were found by a farmer in 1974 and since then they have been excavating the area, they have done an amazing job, quite a sight.
Then we spent the afternoon in the town of Xi’An looking around, quite nice.
Then we flew back to Beijing, packed up all of our stuff (went with 24kg of stuff, left with 50kgs..what the heck did we buy!?!?!) The next morning we flew back to Singapore and have spent the last day or so hanging out with our beautiful little girl!
We loved our time away, we still cannot believe how much we were able to see and do. We never thought in a million years that we would ever be in China, it was really awesome.
I hope you enjoy the pics. I am sure that if you read this whole thing that you have just lost an hour! So sorry…get back to WORK!!
Miss everyone lots, 8 weeks of school left!!