Day 1 - Rest a lot, venture out a bit

We got up this morning and headed down for our breakfast buffet that is here at the hotel. We had been told it was very nice, so we were very much looking forward to it. I don't really know why, they fed us like crazy on the flights. We really got tickled about how busy those stewardess' were for the entire 13 hours. Anyway, when we walked into the room, we noticed ALOT of food. The typical croissants, etc., but many, many closed containers that we had to look in to find out what it was. One was bacon, one was sausage, and then they started getting weird. Next was fried rice, steamed broccoli, sauteed mushrooms in some kind of sauce, etc. Like it was lunch, or supper. We really tried to stick to the breakfast foods, but they weren't very good. So, we branched out, and had the fried rice, and broccoli. It was so delicious!! And I'm sure much healthier than that french toast that was hard as a br ick!! After that, we had to head to Wal Mart to get a new voltage converter, and bottled water. Our voltage converter from Radio Shack lasted all of 12 hours. Thankfully, we weren't in a rush, and could walk the aisles at Wal Mart, (actually it's called Carrefour) to find exactly what we needed. Once we found the water, and the converter, we just walked around for awhile. I was surprised at how many items in the store were American/English. Notebooks with Tigger, written in English. Day planners all written in English. The meat market is hysterical!! People yelling out non stop. I assume they are just yelling what great deals and meats they have. We couldn't figure out what quite alot of the meat actually was. Big fish were flopping out of tanks around peoples feet. And they just left them there. Crazy!! I know people have talked about how crazy it is, but we really enjoyed our t ime there. It's fascinating to watch people and realize how much alike we are to the rest of the world. They were all in there looking for shoes, bottles, etc. just like we were. After that we were able to come back to our room to call back home on Skype. It is so hard for me to believe we are really here, since I've been emailing, and even talking to my family back home. After sitting in our room for awhile, feeling very cowardly, we decided to just branch out and go walk the streets of Beijing. We needed lunch, so off we went. We walked in KFC, and realized nothing looked normal, so we walked a little further out of my comfort zone to McDonald's. Since we haven't seen our guide yet, we are just not knowledgeable enough about the local spots to go to them. Even at McDonald's we only got fries and a coke. I just can't make myself eat any meat here. Not yet anyway. So now we are back at our room. It's about 3:00 in the afternoon here, and we really have nothing to do for the rest of the day. I'm not quite sure what we will end up doing. Maybe head back to Carrefour to watch the meat market!!!

Here are some pictures:

our plane that we flew to Beijing on

roasted quail, with the heads on

feet from some sort of poultry that was sold by the pound in Wal Mart

there are rows and rows of bicycles everywhere