October Holiday Fun

Due to the Chinese National Holiday and Mid-Autum Festival Joab had a week-long holiday, which made it a great week to catch up with friends, see the sights and have some much needed rest! We started the week by going to the Temple of Earth, which is now a small park in north central Beijing, but was originally a place of worship for the emperor. To our surprise we found the main section of this temple being used as the site of a very interesting party! We got to the park and I swear I heard Kenny G (they love Kenny G music here) coming from that section of the park. As we got closer we were met by two larer than life Russian nesting dolls and soon learned we were at a celebration of the "Russian-Chinese" relations. It was a whole lot of Russian dancing, singing and many blow up bouncing things for Miriam to play on - one in each corner of the temple square. The strangest part was that their stage was on top of where they used to offer sacrifices. So they are playing next to these large stone incense things (with incense still burning)! Combined with the fact many people thought we were Russian the whole experience is quite hard to put into words. However, we really enjoyed the music and dancing was amazing.

On Wednesday, Asa's Birthday! We took a boat ride on a Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace, the emporer's Beijing retreat that is imperial in size; more details can be found at http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Summer+Palace.

Asa loved the boat ride (and my sunglasses), but got tired so we just put him in the stroller (which we took on board) and he slept the rest of the way.

The Summer Palace is HUGE and that means a lot of people!!! The picture is of Miriam in front of the Emperor's sleep quarters at the Palace.

On Thursday we went to see the Great Wall of China. I have to admit I was not too thrilled about this- who wants to see a old wall??? Well you do when it is over 2000 years old and build on TOP of mountains. Truly amazing the man power it took for China to do this. Unfortunatly the pictures for this got erased.....but we have a friend who took some and we hope to get some from him soon and post them.

Asa had a great time opening his presents. And Miriam had an ever better time playing with them!





















My Mom wanted to see a picture of what it looks like when I take both kids out on my bike (this is mainly when I pick Miriam up from preschool three days a week). I love to talk to Miraim about her day while we ride home together. Asa loves to wave at people at stop lights and wave "bye bye" everytime a bus passes us.