Beijing Zoo

We are still trying to get adjusted to the time change. We are normally ready to go to bed around 7:30-8pm, the bad part is we wake up at 3 or 4 am. We had a great day here Thursday. For me it started with a short run. I can add a new city, country and continent to my running list now. Hopefully I'll add 2 more cities before we leave. It was about 6am when I ran and the weather was great. Not much traffic when I started, before I finished the roads were extremely busy. I ran a loop to Tiananmen Square. It was pretty amazing to see. I look forward to going back on Saturday and spending a little time there. 

After my run I came back and we had breakfast and headed to the zoo. We eat breakfast at the hotel, and they have a mix of Asian and Western foods. Landon has become more of an adventurous eater, for breakfast today he had some sushi. I wasn't sure if he should eat it, but so far I guess we are good. Landon has also enjoyed the variety of hot tea for breakfast each morning. Lyndsay loves hot tea, but this is the first time Landon has seemed to like it. 

We took a taxi to the zoo. It was the first time the kids had ridden in a taxi. It was a  little wild, but I've ridden in a lot crazier. The zoo here was was extremely large. We felt like we walked a mile before getting to see the first animals. Both kids had a great time.

Lyndsay was excited to see her favorite animal, the giraffe.  It was eating and then it walked over towards us.

Landon enjoyed seeing the Panda bears. 

He also likes the reptiles. He wanted to see a king cobra, but there wasn't one here.

I think my kids were as much of an exhibit as any of the animals yesterday. They are both a little shy and introverted around people they don't know, but they both did great with the attention. They got lots of stairs and points. It was kind of funny.  Sometimes as we were watching the animals we would look beside us to find a group people watching us. A few people walked up and grabbed them by the hand and would begin talking to them. We have no idea what they were saying, not sure if they thought we understood them or not. They also had many people want pictures with them. They were great sports about it all. 

We had hoped to make to the Olympic sites, but decided everyone was too tired after the zoo. We came back to the hotel and rested for a little while before taking the kids to the pool. 

We are excited about tomorrow. We have Great Wall tour scheduled, and we are also supposed to go to the Hutong lanes and ride a rickshaw. Saturday is orientation with our agency and then Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City with our group.

We are enjoying our time, but are anxiously looking forward to Sunday and meeting Addie. We appreciate your prayers for us and for Addie as we have a lot of change to look forward to in the coming days.