Ladybug Adventures

Thursday, November 10, 2005 6:57 AM CST

Subject: Zoo and Temple of Heaven

Hello from Beijing. It has been a busy couple of days. Yesterday Lisa was not feeling well, so she stayed in the hotel room while Steve and Xue Zheng met with our guide around 10:00 am. Our guide took them to the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium. Steve said they went to the aquarium first and while there they saw an indoor show which
featured dolphins and sea lions. Steve said the Beijing aquarium was huge and one of the best he had ever seen.

After the aquarium, they took a quick trip to the zoo to see the giant pandas. Steve said the zoo felt more like a park and that the animals he did see were in pretty poor shape compared to our standards. The panda house was neat, but the outside area for the panda looked pretty ragged.

Since Lisa had not been feeling well, our guide then had lunch sent to our room. After failing to be able to get Xue Zheng down for a nap, we decided to go for a walk. We walked quite a long ways and saw lots of interesting sights. We even found an out food market where everything smelled wonderful, but looked very exotic. We found
one booth that was selling sea horses and scorpions on a stick. We even got watch them thread the live scorpions on to the stick. (Yummy) We had our dinner at McDonald's and then came back to the room.

Today our guide picked us up at 10:00 am and took us to see the Temple of Heaven. It is a place where the Emperor would come to pray to the Jade Emporer in Heaven asking for good weather, etc. for a good harvest for the year. It is a beautiful place, although it is currently under renovation, so we could not see everything.
Surrounding it, the grounds have been made into a park where the local Chinese gather, to play cards, checkers, chess, musical instruments, exercise, sing chinese opera, etc. It is a very interesting and colorful place.

After the Temple of Heaven we went to a Hot Pot restaurant, outside the south gate. It was a bit different than the hot pot we had the first night we were in Beijing. Instead of each of us having our hot pot to cook things in, there was one large hot pot for the entire table. It is essentially the chinese version of fondue using boiling
water instead of oil.

After lunch, we returned to the hotel where Zheng Zheng, Mommy and daddy all took a nap. We woke up and played here in the room for a couple of hours, then went to dinner at a restaurant here next to our hotel. It was very good as usual.

Xue Zheng continues to do well for us. She is amazingly happy most of the time. However, she does still throw a fit when our guide leaves, but the crying bouts get shorter and shorter each day. She has also begun to test us a bit and tends to pout when told no. Even with the language barrier she is basically a very good child.

She is currently singing a chinese song and looking at books while we write this post. She the only words we recognize are Mama and Baba (daddy). It is very cute.

Now we would like to ask for your prayers. Many of you may have heard the U.S. Embassy here in China has issued an alert to all U.S. citizens because the Chinese government has told them of some terrorist threats on 4 and 5 star hotels frequented by U.S. citizens. We are not terribly concerned about this hotel, because we
are one of the few westerners here in this hotel. We are however, slightly concerned about the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou where we will be staying beginning Sunday.

Also, a tropical storm/typhoon is threatening Guangdong Province where Guangzhou and the White Swan Hotel are located. It is expected to make landfall on Sunday, the same day we get to Guangzhou. They are expecting lots of rain and flooding. Please keep us and our travel group in your prayers with these possible threats to our
safety, that we can complete our adoptions and make it safely home.

One last prayer request. Last night was not as good a night for Xue Zheng. She was awake 2 or 3 times crying in the night. It almost appeared as though she might be starting to have night mares or night terrors. As we went through this with Emilie, we know what a traumatic experience this can be for these poor girls.

Hope this finds you all doing well. We will try to post more photos soon.

Emilie, mommy and daddy love you and miss you very much. Your sister still can not wait to meet you. She is as goofy as you are. :) We will be home in one week. :) Trust me, we would come home tomorrow if we could.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Nikole