Forbidden City & Great Wall of China

We are beat. What a whole lot to cram into one day. We started out as we
have every day so far by eating breakfast, except we had not only our
whole group in the breakfast room but lots of other adoptee parents who
all came in yesterday. We have been waking up at 4 am for the last 3
days so our days have been long. We all boarded a bus and went to
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The day was absolutely
gorgeous, especially compared with the last few days, with blue skies in
the mid 70s but windy. There is a lot of work going on everywhere we
have been in preparation for National Day but they were also working on
several permanent monuments in the Square for the Olympics. We did a
whole lot of walking across the square and through the city. The place
was pretty packed with tourists, both foreign and domestic. One
interesting thing happened while I was sitting on a wall next to some
young girl. Either her friend or sister came over and sat between us
having given her camera to her dad and they leaned over towards me with
"peace" signs held up a smiled for their picture with the American.
After the tour we went and had Peking Duck for lunch near the CHI office
and then went over to the office for some "orientation", which was more
like a perspective Powerpoint presentation promoting more adoption,
especially boys with special needs. Then we piled back on the bus for
the 1 hour trip to the Great Wall. Only a couple of people made it to
the top of the section we were at and I wasn't one of them. Anita,
David, and I made it further up than most and got our engraving at the
4th tower that says "I climbed the Great Wall..." Afterwards, we came
back to the hotel and went to Pizza Hut for dinner. Here they have a
salad bar which seems to have fascinated the Chinese people. Everyone at
the bar would take great strides to pile as much onto a bowl as humanly
possible. They would go in layers and build up and out as they added
things, placing things with great precision so as to fill up all air
pockets and create a firm foundation for the next layer. One woman was
at the bar for at least 20 minutes and made about 5 laps. Tommorow is
THE DAY and we are spending our last night alone together too exhausted
to move from all the walking and climbing. We fly out at 10:50 am and
get to Nanchang at 12:50 and will make it to the hotel by 2:00 pm. We
will have 2 hours to unpack and get ready, perhaps go to the store, then
we will get on a bus and go to an Adoption Center where we will receive
the babies shortly after 4:00 pm (3 am CT Sunday morning) and then go
back to the hotel. Tommorow is Mid-Autumn Festival as well which is a
really big family holiday of thanksgiving. We were told today that the
aunties and Orphanage directors will have to stay in Nanchang and not be
able to return home to celebrate with their families (this is their
routine, some of them are driving 6 hours and won't be getting there til
4). So, we have decided as a group to take them out to dinner if they
will go and to by some mooncakes so we can all celebrate together, that
is if we can manage this with the new additions. I can't really
comprehend the kind of emotional day it is going to be tommorow. It is
so unreal to think that tommorow is the day we have been working on for
over a year and waiting on for over 6 years. Praise God!!