Hello Bloggers,

Yesterday, Thursday, our friend Ping took us to the Forbidden City. Frank Baum and the producers at MGM had to have visited here when they put together Wizard of Oz. The area is beautiful. You walk thru gate after gate. If the bricks were yellow instead of grey, you would expect Munchkins to come out singing. I tried to find where they filmed Jackie Chan but couldn't. Also, I was wearing my Florida Gators t-shirt-I taught several in the crowd the gator chomp. Joan and Ping were embarrassed but the crowd did a good job of chomping!

Meals have been incredible. Joan posted that we had our first big dinner a a hot pot. Since then we have dined in the hotel for breakfast( fried rice with ham and a lot of scrambled egg, duck eggs, corn porridge, a kind of muffin,etc) a noodle shop for lunch (rice noodles in beef broth with beef and veggies) and the street vendors. Outside our hotel is a semi-permanent batch of stalls. It covers about a two block area. ( If you are from Evansville, picture the Fall Festival) You can get absolutely any animal or animal part, grilled, that you could want. Last night I was torn between the grilled sheep penis or the stuffed dumpling. YOU decide what I selected. They have snake, scorpion, centipede, dragon fly, etc., etc., etc. If you tried out 3 new things a night, it would take a month to sample it all. I am considering opening a booth with ham and bean soup or chilli!

If you like mini-skirts COME TO CHINA! (I will try to get photos today.) I have a sore neck.

I have photos of some adorable children. We will post those, together with ones we take today, this weekend. It seems like the children are taught as infants to be camera ready!

We met our friend Ping's Father. He is 48 and getting ready to retire. He currently is a rep for Shandong Oil Co. He was here in Beijing to meet with several from the US. The mayor of Houston was here for a reception. Ping was excited to get to go to the reception with her Dad. She wants to go to RICE ( no this is NOT a rice /chop stick joke) for her MBA. I will continue to try to talk her into a SEC school or Big Ten.

We hope all is well stateside. We miss our friends but are fully loving our adventure.