an Exciting day

Today was a BIG day.
For me it started off with drowsiness, having only slept about 5 hours, but the day quickly got better. We had a scheduled meeting to attend, so we had to run out the door soon after waking. It was the first real Baha'i meeting I've been to in China, and actually is the first one I've been to in months. It was so refreshing. All the people there were really cool and the atmosphere was comfortable and exciting. The Baha'is here are starting their first IPG ever.
The meeting made me excited to come back to China in about a year or so on my own.

After that we went to lunch at a Korean place with stove tops embedded in the center of each table. Then we went to Starbucks, and then off to Summer Palace. Our venture to Summer Palace was intended to be in celebration of Madison's first birthday. She can't be around other foreign babies because she could get them sick, and she can't have sweet things because mom says no, so the park was the best thing we could come up with in place of a gathering of babies, or a big cake.

Summer Palace is an enormous complex built for the royalty so they could have a place to cool down in the summers. That's really all I know. We actually didn't enter the palace, but we walked around the outside for three hours, following the path of the longest corridor in the world.
It was a fun time full of beautiful architecture, interesting foreignors from all around, and a whole lot of practicing my poor Chinese walking with the ayi, arm in arm.

I took so many pictures today, it's difficult to choose which ones to post, so I might post some more tomorrow from today's journey.


You could rent those little toy boats to ride around the lake in.



Paintings everywhere!


The entrance to the longest corridor in the world, and family-Justin, Sebrina with the silly gestures, baby in the carriage, and Shan Shan (the ayi)'s back.


Colorful underside of a rooftop.


Detail of a stone carved lion.


At the entrance to the Summer Palace are these hefty doors painted red with golden knobs.


This was also at the Summer Palace. Finally I was able to capture one of my favorite things about China so far. The men are expected to carry their girlfriends' or wives' purses. What makes it so great is that a lot of the women like to buy bags just like that one, that simply could never pass for a man-purse. It makes me wonder if they buy the most feminine bags on purpose...