Saturday

Another busy day of seeing the sights in Beijing. It is cloudy and smoggy today. It is a given to have a sore throat and burning eyes, I think. We started the day off at the Forbidden City. It is my understanding that this place is made up of 9,000 separate buildings. It is the place where the emperor lived. Every building had a function or meaning. It was so vast, I cannot even describe it. Huge. Justin is quite taken with their rock garden features, they are mini mountains that were built in and among the buildings of the Forbidden City. It is a maze of buildings and much of it is blocked off, so you can't even see the bulk of it. However, we wondered for three hours and saw even more than Summer had ever seen. We ventured to a place where there was no one near and a man ushered us into a closed off area, where we saw the Emperor's bed. They hold in high esteem this bed..quite ornate and not what we would call very comfy. The bed was many hundreds of years old. We saw many artifacts as well, jewelry used by the Empress, utensils, scepters, decorations, many statues that were worshipped. Most things were made of jade, so in just like new condition. They were often from the 1700's but some were marked with B.C. dates. There were people by the hundreds in every court yard that we entered and quite a few more children than we saw yesterday at the Summer Palace...but, of course, never more than one or two.

We then went to the Olympic Park. Built for the 2008 Olympics, it was quite vast and we decided that no other country could put so many resources into such a place. Underground is a shopping center that was beautiful and so huge we only saw a small bit of it as we found a place to eat. The food again was quite tasty, but the portions are incredible. Summer ordered us bowls of noodles and each person got their own bowl with about 6 cups of noodles and then another 1 cup portion of some sort of embellishment for the noodles, plus side dishes that were amazing.. This is how you eat noodles with chop sticks....SLUUUUURRRRPPP, slurp, sssssslurrrrp, sllllluuurrrrp. I find using the chopsticks to be fun, but I think our driver and Summer were silently laughing at my meager attempts to get it done. I finally mastered the peanuts though.

We are currently at our hotel taking a rest until dinner, not that we will be hungry any time soon. We are still quite messed up as far as our schedule but are resolved not to nap so we can sleep tonight. Can't believe we are 24 hours away from holding Emma. We fly out of Beijing at 9:40 and are scheduled to meet Emma at 4 pm. We are nervous but SO so SO ready to meet her. It can't come soon enough. We, I admit, have enjoyed these couple of days learning some Chinese culture and enjoying each others company...but I am ready for the real reason I came here. Emma Grace Morgan. Thank you for all the prayers, we have surely experienced safety and health so far by God's grace. We ask continued prayer as we prepare to take on the awesome responsibility of our precious and loved fifth child and also for her to experience peace through the situation. Although at 18 months, one would think she won't remember her life at the SWI, but our daughter will mourn the loss of her present home and the loss of all she has known. You can pray that God grants her little heart healing from the tremendous stress that she will go through in the coming days. Protection from illness and the absence of fear.



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