Bye Bye Beijing. . .

We have so much to post, sorry for the delay but we were having a hard time accessing our blog, it is hit or miss here. Emily and Kim Dasher arrived on my birthday (Saturday) we were so excited to see them, show them our apartment, and play tour guides. We celebrated my birthday with a Thai dinner with Kim, Emily, Ryan (of course), Jimmy and Cecelia. It was a great way to celebrate, thanks for all the birthday wishes!!! The next day we had a marathon of a day but it was great. We started out at the Summer Palace, it was Sunday so it was filled with locals which was so wonderful to see. We kept telling Kim and Emily that they brought the good weather as all of a sudden it became Spring in Beijing. The flowers were blooming (Cherry Blossoms all over), the sky was blue and the sun was out! Amazing!!! Then we went to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. We walked all over and even took a rick shaw tour through the Hutongs of Beijing. The Hutongs are the old neighborhoods that are now being torn down to build high rise apartment buildings for the locals. The Hutongs that still exist have become a tourist attraction as it seems very authentic to get lost in these alley ways where Chinese life seems to be standing still among all the change outside the walls of the Hutong. Our tour guide spoke very little English, I mean very little and he tended to get very animated when attempting to describe something to us. We enjoyed a snack and adult beverage at Ho Hai, a great area in the back lakes of the Forbidden City. Then we took Kim and Emily to the Peninsula for Peking Duck dinner! It was a full day! We sent them on a Great Wall tour the next day which they truly enjoyed and then met up to go to the silk market (insert Ryan's comment: Let's just say the vendors were happy to see us arrive...it seems this was payback for my buddies' visit, since all talk of sports and beer were off the table and it was PRADA and GUCCI that was being thrown around!]. They left for Xian the next day and Ryan and I enjoyed two more days in Beijing. We had one last dinner with Jimmy and Cecelia and gave them a San Francisco coffee table book to entice them to come visit us so Ryan and I can play host to them as they so generously did for us in Beijing. [insert Ryan's comment: at Julie's suggestion, we visited the school I boarded at 3 years ago. It was fun to see and it looked as if nothing had changed. I suggested to Julie that we eat at the local restaurant outside the front gate and she looked at me, incredulously, and replied, "you mean the same place you told me you would eat at and immediately come down with a strain of food poisoning?" Needless to say, we decided to eat elsewhere.]

Ryan and I arrived this morning in Shanghai via the night train from Beijing. We enjoyed our time in Beijing as it gave us the time to reflect on our trip thus far, to feel like locals (mastering the subway and the supermarket!) and to better understand the past, present and future development of Beijing. We are excited to meet up with Emily and Kim today (they fly in from Xian today!)we are off to explore Shanghai!