Beautiful Beijing!

I've only been home now for about 72 hours and already I am missing Beijing! We have had the most incredible experience! It was wonderful, delightful, eye-opening, invigorating, exhausting but totally worth all our time, energy and expenses! I honestly don't know where to even try to begin to share all that we have seen and experienced. First of all, it was so great to be all together with Heidi, Eric, Colton, Cory, Quincy, Capri and Conner for a whole 21 days! Kudos to Eric for putting up with "the in-laws" for that length of time -- he gets the gold star! We were so lucky to have been able to have this authentic "living in China" perspective instead of just what the typical tourist/visitor would see and to be able to be accompanied with a "local" that speaks the language fluently -- another gold star for Eric!

I didn't really go to China with many preconcieved expectations of the country or the city of Beijing. Most of my opinions were from what Heidi has told us about living there since September and she has been quite positive in all of her stories and experiences. I have to admit that I was very pleasantly surprised to discover how much I immediately loved Beijing! It is a HUGE city... it is the size of the state of Connecticut. I don't remember how many billion people live there but seriously, billions, with a "B". The landscaping was another big surprise. First off, I was so surprised by how green it is: trees everywhere and lush grass lawns. I was not expecting there to be so many flowers everywhere too. Rose bushes in full bloom lined the median of many of the roadways -- red, white, yellow, orange, pink. I just kept wondering who had to deadhead all the blooms (then I remembered they do have billions of people that need jobs). There were also flowerboxes of petunias hanging along the sides of the freeway overpasses. All of these flowers resulted in a lovely fragrance in the air as we drove through the city... not what I was expecting to smell I have to admit!

The skyscrapers in Beijing are impressive as well. The downtown area is covered in lots and lots of tall buildings and lots and lots more under construction. I think I had read somewhere that there are more cranes in Beijing than any other city in the world. One morning as we drove downtown, Quincy & I counted 38 cranes. The skyscrapers are not as close together as they are in like New York City. The Chinese must love to try new architecture each and every time they erect a new building because none of the skyscrapers looked the same.

Now I'm sure you've heard something about the crazy traffic congestion in Beijing... I have NEVER seen ANYTHING like it in my life!!! I don't even think it can be described. Heidi tried to warn us and give us examples but until you have actually riden in it you can not believe how off-the-charts chaotic it is! There are pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, pedi-cabs, motorcycle cabs, donkeys pulling carts, huge tour buses, city buses, and every kind of car all going every direction and making up their own rules to suit their needs (passing on the right side in the emergency lane is a favorite). There is alot of horn honking but we soon realized it is seldom honking in a "hey buddy, you just cut me off" way but in a "just want to let you know I'm over here" kind of way. All the bikes have bells on them and everyone rings their bells as they prepare to pass another bike or a pedestrian. It is very civilized in a very uncivilized way. It would never work over here!

Heidi swore she would never drive over there but Eric gave her a GPS for the car for her birthday in April (a gold star for that too) and by the time we got there she had built up her confidence enough to venture out on her own -- with us as willing accomplices. Each morning we would decide where we wanted to go that day and then Eric would download the coordinates from Google earth and we were set! We never got lost even once though the GPS did have to "recalculate" a fair amount of times.

I am struggling to get my body clock back on mountain daylight time. I was awake until 5 am this morning and then I finally slept until noon. I think it has been much harder to adjust coming this direction than it was going over there. So I think this is all I am up to for tonight. I have lots more adventures to share... good night...