Day 4 Beijing

Thursday, May 13
I slept like a baby last night, waking only once and falling back asleep immediately before finally waking up without an alarm at 5:30 fully refreshed. I tried to get on the internet in my room, but they are telling me since there is no one from the I.T. department there that I'll need to use the business center. There's an ethernet cable in the room, but apparently the port on the switch needs to be activated before it can be used and it's sounding like that that needs to be done manually by someone who is not here.

Breakfast is in the cafe - Maxim's - just like the restaurant in Paris. The decor is Parisian and has a full length Tiffany style window. Breakfast is a combination of Asian and Western food. The coffee is super duper strong, good, but I think it's intended for cream. After breakfast I went to the business center and sent a quick e-mail, since each room gets 15 minutes free internet access per day.

At 9 am we boarded the bus for Tiananmen Square. It's got a lot of people, but not too crowded. Our guide for the day is Ina, she is very vivacious and talkative. The Forbidden City is massive, 9,999.5 rooms. In its hey day 20,000 people lived there - there was not a bathroom in the place. In the Ching dynasty, the emperor had 3000 concubines, then they figured he spent all of his time thinking about the concubines, so they limited him to 100 and eventually, only 72. Only 1 real man was allowed to live there - the emperor - the rest were eunuchs. The emperor had no privacy, not even during love making. In fact, the eunuchs would record who he made love to so if one of the concubines got pregnant they would know if it was the emperors. The building's are beautiful and ornate on the outside - some buildings you can view the inside from the outside, but it's not easy to see inside. About half way through we lost Dale Sakamoto and Clinton Munoz, they caught up with us about the time we got to the gardens. The gardens are massive and filled with peonies - the national flower of China.

About 1pm we exited the Forbidden City and took the bus to a restaurant where we had a buffet. Lots of interesting food, not all of it good. One of the dishes was called Western meat. Another was labeled Mexican something or another - didn't eat either of them. They did have a cappucino machine and although the drink was sweetened, it was very good, so I had a second cup.

We boarded the bus for Temple of Heaven - on the way there we passed a Dairy Queen. Walking through the passage ways for the Temple of Heaven there are many groups doing many activities, old men playing cards, older women with belts of coins belly dancing, there is also someone playing Frere Jacques poorly. The Temple of Heaven - like the forbidden city can go on forever, we spent 1/2 hour in a small part of it. When we left, the same man was still playing Frere Jacques - I said he would probably like It's a Small World.

We had 1/2 hour back at the hotel and then departed for a church for a concert. The church is older, but has been refurbished since the last time they were here. Teresa and I are responsible for selling the CDs and someone found a table for us to use, but we had to move it outside, a nice breeze was blowing so moving was a good thing. Once the service started, Jeff came out to join us, About 7:30, we noticed Clinton staggering toward us like he was drunk. We got him to sit on the bench, he told us he almost passed out. We took off his tux coat, tie and shirt so he could cool down. After asking him some questions we determined he was dehydrated. Jeff and Teresa sat him up and we fed he part of a protein bar and bottle of water. Jeff took Doc's hankerchief and poured water on it, we put it on his forehead to speed up the cool down. Some of the church members brought over some chinese herbs and Jeff said that we didn't want it, but later Lynn came by and said that he should take it. The stuff smells like Vick's Vapo-rub, so Teresa and I sat him up and poured it and water down him. Teresa and I were laughing so hard while we were doing it, we couldn't breathe. Yes, I'm sure it doesn't sound funny, but we were sure it looked ridiculous and the things we were saying to get him to drink it was pretty funny.

Dinner was at the KFC next to the hotel. We got there at 9:30, because they didn't know how to handle about 30 people at once, they sent us to the room downstairs and had someone take our order, we didn't get our food until 10:30 when Jeff went upstairs and found out that they had only 1 woman working on our order. Back to the hotel to finish this not and now to sleep at 12:15