Day 2: Beijing Great Wall & Acrobatics Show

We woke up this morning (Saturday) so happy and so refreshed!  We all got a good long full night of sleep and it was fabulous.  We got ready and ate breakfast at our hotel.  They had Chinese breakfast (lo mein, marinated hard boiled eggs, dumplings, and more) and American breakfast (french toast, hash browns, etc.) and it was delicious.  Very fun to try new things!

Helen met us at 9am to head to The Great Wall.  There are 2 other families here in Beijing with us and it was a HUGE blessing to be with them today.  The Lawrence family have their 6 year old girl Olivia, and their 13 year old son Anthony with them, and they are adopting a 9 year old girl named Lily.  Our girls made fast friends with Olivia!  And the Capps family (also from NC) is adopting an 18 month old little girl.  And I can not say enough good things about our guide Helen!  She has been so amazing. She has been sweet with the girls and truly taken care of every need for us.  I will miss her when we leave tomorrow.

We drove to The Great Wall and spent about 2 hours there.  Matt took a lot of great pictures!  I'll post some now to give you a taste and we'll share more later.  It was perfect weather and so so beautiful.

 Molly, Olivia, Leah 

 All 4 of us!

Group after group of Chinese people wanted to take pictures of our girls.  Matt snapped this picture to show what it was like.  But usually, they didn't want us in it, they only wanted the girls.  Leah, Molly, and Olivia were very kind to smile time after time for them.  Most of them didn't speak any English but would point to their cameras to ask to take pictures.   

Matt and the other guys in our group went really far up the wall.  Cara and I took the 3 girls as far as they could go and then walked back down with them. We met up with the guys about an hour later.  They climbed so high and it is so steep!  They saw some amazing views.

 We bought the girls pandas. They were happy. :)

After such a fun time at the Wall, Helen took us to a Chinese restaurant for lunch.  Delicious!!

Next, we made the dive back to the city and went to an acrobatics show that Beijing is famous for.

Our day ended with another Chinese dinner. Came back to our hotel, tucked the girls in bed, and now we're headed there ourselves. Tomorrow, we do a few more things in Beijing and then fly to Chongqing (Jack's city!!).  Goodnight from China, friends!