What happened to Thursday?

We left Austin at 12pm on Wednesday and arrived in China at 11:30pm on Thursday.  When we crossed the international date line we jumped thirteen hours into the future.  By the time we got settled in at the hotel it was 2am.  Quinn could not sleep at the hotel because she slept eight hours on the plane.  We were up at 6am to get ready for our big day of touring.  We started at Tiananmen Square, then the Emperor's Palace.  It was very  interesting and informative, and loooooooong.  There are 15 families in our group and most are traveling with their other children and even some aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  Our guides are fantastic but it was a chore for them to keep us together in such a crowded and large space.  We had to stop every ten minutes and number off. 

We went to lunch at a very eclectic restaurant where I saw my first Chinese tranny.  The restaurant has a stage and periodically servers get up and do an act.  We saw a gourd flute player, some traditional Chinese dancers, and a group of hip hop belly dancers, which included our guy.  After the restaurant we visited a silk factory.  The tour was about ten minutes long and very interesting, then we had an hour or two in the store. 

Afterwards, we took a rickshaw ride through Hutong, which is an old part of Beijing with narrow streets.  We were able to visit the home of one of our guide's friends.  It was so cool.  This home was built with a courtyard in the middle and looked like the home from the new Karate Kid movie.  Our rickshaw driver was a bit insane.  He felt that he had to be first in a line that had no end.  It was fun, but disturbing.  He would swerve at pedestrians to make them back off so that we could pass.  He also rammed into the side of another rickshaw.  We got back to the hotel around six and walked to McDonalds. 

It is 7:15 and Quinn and Andrew are already asleep.  Tomorrow, we leave the hotel at 8:20 to visit the Great Wall, Olympic City, and somewhere that I can't remember right now.  Tomorrow night we will see an acrobatic show.  I am going to join Andrew and Quinn now and will post more tomorrow evening! #

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