Day-3: The Great Wall

Once again we enjoyed a busy day playing tourist in Beijing. We started off with a beautiful drive out of the city. It was interesting to see the city give way to countryside. There were lots of beautiful trees and flowers all along the road. It made me think of Hawaii with Oleander and Hibiscus. There were also many colors of roses and huge fields of cosmos. After about 30 minutes of driving, we stopped at a jade factory. It was interesting to see some craftsmen working with jade and lots of jade pieces for sale. I did not know about the "jade culture" in China, but we learned a little more today. It is traditional for a mother to give her daughter a jade bangle when she gets married. Then the daughter wears the bangle until her daughter gets married and she passes it on. At one time only the emperor and his court could wear jade.

As we continued our drive, we began to see the mountains and then the Great Wall. It was a stunning sight. The mountains were kind of misty and we could see layer after layer of them. Curving through it was the wall. We began to climb the very uneven and worn stairs. I quickly got tired and quit. Andy, on the other hand, went up quite far. He hiked with our guides uncle and the grandma that is accompanying our travel mates. Several others in our group went up some distance, but those three went the farthest. I spent my time at the bottom exploring around and people watching. I kept thinking how much Kimberly, Caleb and Josiah would have enjoyed. It was easy to imagine the invading Mongols coming over that ridge and the Hans defending their land. What an amazing place!

We had lunch at a touristy restaurant and store and then headed home. We tried to go by the Bird's Nest, but it was blocked off because tonight is the opening ceremonies for the paralympics. We are hoping to drive by it on our way to the airport tomorrow morning.

It was nice today to have some time to get to know our travel mates better. We are all getting eager to meet our new family members and we are looking forward to sharing this experience with each other.

Tonight Andy and I walked down the street to McDonalds. We stopped for awhile on a pedestrian overpass to watch the crazy traffic. There were bicyclists and pedestrians, cars, buses and taxi's all going in every direction. It was entertaining to stand above it all and watch.

We're packed up and ready to head to Zhengzhou tomorrow. Monday morning is "gotcha day" for Moriah Mei! We are so thankful for the Lord's faithfulness in all of these things. We want to say thank you for all of the prayers that have been lifted on our behalf.