Saturday, November 21, 2009 by Joy

I was able to sleep from 8:30 to 6:00. I really needed it. My back kind of hurts from the rock hard bed. We had breakfast at the hotel again. They had some new food. I ate hash browns, bacon, French toast, dragon fruit, and watermelon. It was yummy.

We went 1½ hours away to Living Hope's Fangshan Training Center. Sixty-eight children live there ranging from 6-17. They just got 12 new children. The children have no parents and their only relatives are either too old or too poor to care for them. They are not able to be adopted because they do have living relatives. The children were preparing for the 1st anniversary of the training center opening so we saw a rehearsal of what they will perform. They were so good and we were very fortunate to come on a Saturday when they were able to share their performance with us. Here is what they did:
Heavenly Road Dance
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (in English and Chinese)
Beijing Opera Dance
Mask Dance
Sun Above the Clouds (song)
Spicy Girl Dance
Door of Blessing

We were able to meet up with a friend who is my mom's friend's daughter. She volunteers at the Training Center. My Mom was excited to see her. She spent the rest of the day with us.

We were able to eat lunch with the children. We got our trays and chopsticks and stood in line with the children to get our food. We had rice, sweet and sour pork, mixed vegetables, and green beans with potatoes. After our meal we took our trays to the trough sink to wash them as the children have to do. We made Jordan do it as well to get the experience.

After that we went to the Great Wall. It was very hard to climb because the steps are very uneven. Some are very short and some were high. On the first very steep hill, there was ice on the steps. It was very hard to not slip on them. I could definitely tell that I was out of shape. As we got to the bottom of the section we were on we saw the place where you can put locks on a chain connected to the wall. We bought a lock, tied on a purple ribbon (for RQ), and locked it on the chain. Instead of making the traditional wish before throwing the key over the side, we said a prayed that we would always love Taylor and she would always love us. Jordan went to throw the key over and instead hit the wall and the key bounced back at his feet. He finally got it over on the second throw.

As we drove to supper we passed the Water Cube and Bird's Nest from the Olympics. It was only supposed to take 1½ hours, but traffic was so bad that it took over 2 hours to get to the restaurant. Jordan fell asleep so Stefan had to carry him in. He slept on the floor on our coats until the food came. We had a Peking Duck dinner. I was not impressed. It was very fatty tasting. We had several other dishes, but I only really liked the fried rice.

We are off to the airport tomorrow to fly to Nanjing which is the capital of Taylor's province. There is a possibility that we will get her tomorrow, but we will definitely have her by Monday afternoon.