Thursday--Summer Palace & Hutongs

We met George at 10am...and yet we STILL couldn't get down there on time!  I guess that's what happens when we're 13 hrs ahead of our "life" back home.  We were on skype nearly all morning, which put us late getting downstairs.  Since he was just waiting for us, I set my "must be on time" mentality aside and let us be late.  Anyways, we hit the road with going to the Summer Palace being the first stop.  It was warm and sunny (as you can tell from the pics I posted earlier).  If you don't know Asian culture, the women want to be as "white" as possible.  So all of the skin care products have bleach in them and all women wear big hats to protect themselves from the sun.  So, when we first got there, there was a vendor selling hats and Rachel wanted one.  That's why you see her in the hat.  Funny thing, though, is that she did not even wear it the entire time!  I do wonder how she will handle in America everyone wants to be tan, while here that sends the message that you are poor or not beautiful or have a manual labor job outside.  Honestly, I don't think she will care, but we'll see.  I got sunglasses I really like at walmart (I forgot mine), but the screws holding the lenses to the frame fell out, so I'll have to fix them when I get home.  Consequently, I could not wear them at the Summer Palace and could have really used them!

When we got there, there was police officers and a large area blocked off.  A few minutes later, an important person (George thought might be the former president of France) drove up with his security.  He and several others got out and were ushered inside.  I don't know if he was on vacation or what, but Rachel got a really good pic of one of the security guards.  We walked around for a little while seeing different aspects, being told some history, etc. then we took the dragon boat across the lake to another part of the park area.  There was a vendor who was selling what looked like a princess crown, but had feathers hanging down and she wanted one.  And like an idiot, I did not get one for Megan. I honestly do not know WHAT I was thinking.  It was less than $2, I should have gotten 2.  Oh well.  Hopefully I can find something here in GZ that will be similar.

Then we went to the Hutongs, which is "old Beijing".  It was really neat.  We got to ride on the rickshaw and stop at a house where the man said the past 5 generations had lived in that house.  He was clearly well-to-do as he had a computer on the table and a very large flat screen tv on the wall.  He is also the 5th generation artist in his family/in-laws.  Rachel requested to have lunch at KFC (much better than McDs!).  She asked at the hotel if we were going to get to see the man from the orphanage.  I said, no, we won't see him anymore.  When we got in the car on Friday to go to the airport, she asked George if she could call him.  She talked to him for a few minutes and I made sure that we got his phone number so she can call him via skype whenever she wants.  She clearly was connected to him and I want her to maintain that relationship as much as possible.

That's about all I can think of about Thursday...and I have no other notes that I wrote down, so I guess that pretty much sums it up!