Day 1 - Beijing

This man's job is to ride around and sweep up trash on the street.  The streets are EXTREMELY clean.  We saw multiple street sweepers as well.

People cleaning the sidewalks.

Our first "photo session."  They wanted this little girl next to Deklan.

There are many bikes in Beijing!

I'm still not quite sure what these things are.  I think they might be some sort of enclosed bicycle taxi thing???

Bikes are never locked up.  It's also amazing to see how old they are, yet they just fix them and keep riding them!  We should take lessons from them!

Deklan looking at floating pokemon card in the water!

The entrance of the Forbidden City

The boys inside the Forbidden City

Another "photo session"

Then the mom wanted one alone with me.

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City.  The details were stunningly beautiful!

The Forbidden City

The boys in front of a turtle statue.  Forbidden City

Forbidden City

Our Hotel

Trayton being silly with the cloth frisbee.

And, now Deklan is being silly.

Well, it's almost 4pm here.  After my last update, we went and ate breakfast at the buffet in our hotel restaurant.  They did a good job with it.  There was a selection of Chinese foods (noodles, vegetables, dumplings) as well as your standard cereal, made to order omelets, and the such.  After breakfast, we headed out and walked to the Forbidden City.  The walk took us about 30 minutes.  We were stopped several times by people wanting to take our pictures.  They usually had a child and wanted to take pictures of their child with our boys.  The person most in demand for pictures was Deklan.  I think because he is little, people just liked him or something.  Most people that wanted him in a picture had little girls and they wanted a picture of their little girl with him.  We were wondering if they were wanting to plan a marriage or something (kidding.)  With all of that being said, all of the boys were photographed a lot today.  I even had some young man want to take a picture with only me!  Haa Haa!!!  I guess at 40, foreigner 20 somethings still think I'm hot - HA!  When we got to the Forbidden City, there were a lot of people as it is a holiday weekend here in China.  We got a self guided ear set for each of us and went on our way.  It was hard to listen to the taping though because we were always being asked to take pictures with people...  We finished up the Forbidden City earlier than planned because it was so crowded and the boys were tired.  So, on our walk back to our hotel, we stopped and had lunch at a little restaurant.  Lunch was good and really cheap!  It was only around $20 for way more food than we needed.  Breakfast on the other hand at our hotel was $50!  The food was a little oily though - yet it was very fresh and the vegetables were cooked perfectly - not over cooked.  We stopped at a little store and bought some oranges (to cleans our palates) and water and headed up to our room.  The boys and I hung out in our apartment for an hour or so while Todd did a swim/run workout in the health club.  The boys played frisbee with their cloth frisbees in the hallway as well as played with their diablos.  The boys also made a friend with a 9 year old Chinese boy that I think LIVES in one of the apartments in the building.  He came out in the hall and played frisbee with Trayton.  He gave Trayton a carton of cookies and Trayton gave him a pack of gum.  I was able to get our suitcases organized. When I packed, I didn't have a Todd suitcase, a Kallen suitcase etc., I packed so that a little bit of everyone's stuff was in each bag - that way if a bag was lost we would still be fine.  Well, let me tell you, in theory, that sounds great, but when you are traveling with 5 people and have stuff for a 6th packed too, it is REALLY hard to find things.  So, I took an hour or so and got us organized so that we each have our own suitcase - not we can find things and I am a lot happier.  Oh, I also learned how to use the washing machine/dryer in our apartment...  I guess it is a little 2 in 1 machine.  It was running when I left, so hopefully it cleans thing correctly and doesn't eat things.  Right now, Todd is taking the boys swimming.  Tonight, we don't know what we will do.  We may go out to dinner with Todd's bosses relative, but if we can't meet up, we will venture out on our own.  Our apartment in right in the neighborhood where the night market it, so we may go check that out.  I'm sure we will get to bed early as we have to meet our driver/guide in the lobby by 7am to go to the Great Wall and the Olympic Stadium.  Here are a few pictures...