Beijing - TianAnMen Square, Forbidden City & Great Wall (Slightly Long)

Today was quite an eventful day that included LOTS of walking.
The photo above is of course Lane at Tian.An.Men Square and below is a photo of my mom.
So now those of you who haven't met her know what she looks like.
I am so thankful she is there in my place.

Below is the Great.Wall. What an awesome photo. Talk about incredible architecture!!!
My mom only made it up to the 1st tower. It was too much for her. A lot of it had to do with the heat and the air quality. Even an hr away from Beijing where they went you can still see how horrible the smog is in the photo.

Lane actually wrote an awesome summary of the day, so I am going to post bits and pieces of it below.
Tomorrow they fly to Chang.sha and Monday is Gotcha Day. However, Lane and my mom were told by the coordinator in Beijing that it is possible that they could arrive in Chang.sha and the babies could be on their way. So Sunday could possibly be the day. I won't find out until Sunday morning ATL time if that became the case or not. It's both scary and exciting to think that in 24 hrs I could see my baby girl in her Daddy's arms.

Talking with Lane via Sky.pe I got the impression that the 1st couple of days in Beijing were helpful in getting acclimated to his surroundings. It helps him get a sense of who the Chinese people are and about the country his daughter was born in. With Lane having traveled the world with his career, he's always been open to adventure and trying something new. The Far East is the only place he has never been (until now) and one of places he wanted to go to most. I think he is definitely ready to have Emi in his arms so that he can start providing the love and care he's been wanting to since we started this crazy journey. Not going isn't so much what bummed me out, but what did was that I won't get to see the minute by minute bonding he will be doing with her until he can return to the US with her. I need to stop here because the tears are welling and I don't feel like wiping down my keyboard.

Lane's recap:
The second day in China was much more activity filled. I am quite tired now that it’s over.
We started by going to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen square was impressive by its size, our guide said that 1 million people could fit in the square (presumable at the same time). Our guide stopped a few times for us to take photographs and to explain some of the history of the buildings we were walking through, but a lot of the time was spent walking, so many of my pictures were “snap shots” taken while walking so that I didn’t get separated from the group. There were lots, I mean lots, of people there. It was Saturday, and also some of the schools and colleges are on holiday now, so there were plenty of people with the free time to visit the site. Most of the buildings you didn’t actually go in, but in several you could look through open doorways to see what is in side. Despite the doorways being quite large, there were throngs pushing to get a look inside. The worst was to get a look into the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where people were literally pushing to get closer to see, quite annoying to say the least.

Nearly everyone in the group met us with, “Oh you’re the Tuttles! We read Liene’s blog and she’s been such a support to us all.”

After that we went to lunch at a restaurant and were served Peking Duck. The lunch was very good, with many different dishes to go along with the duck. The chef carves up the duck near the table and you use eat the meat with cucumber and green onion wrapped up in a eggroll wrapper – kind of like a fajita. The meat was very tender and tasty. All the dishes were, in fact.

We then drove to the Great Wall. On the way, we drove by the Olympic Park and saw the bird’s nest stadium, and the cube aquatic center. Very cool looking architecture. The Great Wall was fun, we had about an hour to walk along it, so I climbed up for about half and hour and then back down. I’m quite tired from the hike – no need to hit a Stairmaster for a while.

On the drive back, we were brought back to reality. Even though the site seeing was fun, hearing the details of when we needed to meet at the hotel lobby to go to the airport to fly to the province where we’ll meet Emilija made the purpose of the trip more real. Starting to become excited and nervous at the same time. I hope we’ll be able to get along and start bonding and that I’ll do a good job caring for her.