We are here!

We made it and I figured out with some new friends how to send posts using my email!  Exciting! The flight was really long, we got to Beijing at around 11:30 and got to our hotel room at like 1am. We slept and feel pretty good today.  We started off this morning with a great breakfast. The hotel here has an amazing variety of food. Even watermelon juice!  Our group here has 7 families from all over the USA all adopting from the Henan Provence here in China.  It is fun to meet them and find out more about them and why they choose to adopt. We met and were off to the old part of Beijing. (800 year old neighborhood) and rode rickshaws around the area.  A kind Chinese lady let us all tour her house that is over 150 years old. She grew up here and lives in that old part of town. Her house has the court in the middle of it and different rooms all around.  Each person has an appointed place where they are to have their rooms.  They had a small garden in the middle with pigeons and fish! Her husband is a retired physics teacher and now paints calligraphy.  Her daughter and son-in-law live there with a grandson also.  It was really nice of her to let us in.  Our rep said that this is the first year that someone allowed us to tour their house!   Next we went to the Silk factory.  I had seen a video about the silk road and how silk was made, but to see it in real life was cool.  The silk worms are cultivated and when they cocoon themselves about 20 something days after they were eggs. They take them and boil them and then just pull on it. The silk comes off as a string.  They combine like 5 together to make the silk stronger and then make all kinds of stuff out of it.  We saw rugs, clothes, purses, pictures, etc. Lots!  If the cocoon is a double one, the silk strands are too jumbled up and they are stretched out to make the inside of blankets instead if the cotton filling or down.  A comforter blanket.  It is supposed to be easy to clean and very nice in the summer and winter.    Next we went to lunch at a Chinese place our guide (Sticky chopsticks) had previously picked out for us to go too.  He ordered already too!  The food was pretty good!  I liked the peppered steak and the chicken. I am not sure what was on the chicken.  Derek tried the duck and all the other stuff that looked a little weird. He liked almost everything as well. At lunch we chatted more about adopting and heard from those that have been through adopting before their stories.  I love to hear about them! I am going to try to post a picture with this. Hope it works!   I'll finish more later, We are really hungry!