Pandas, Palaces and Peking Duck

Our day started with a quick stop at the Beijing Zoo to see the panda bears. The panda is the national treasure of China and pictures of pandas can be seen everywhere. In addition to the pandas that normally live at this zoo, they have also brought in 8 more pandas specifically for the Olympics.

Next, we went to the Summer Palace. As its name implies, the Summer Palace was used as a summer residence by China's imperial rulers - as a retreat from the main imperial palace known as the Palace Museum (or 'Forbidden City').

Our last stop was The Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven, is where the Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties worshiped Heaven and prayed for good harvests.

For lunch we had a typical "group tour" lunch...Chinese style. It was good and really did not differ that much from the Chinese food we eat in the U.S. For dinner tonight we had the traditional Peking Duck that is said to be the signature dish for Beijing. It was delicious! They bring the duck out to the table and carve it and then you eat the duck on these little pancakes with various condiments. We were expecting the dinner to be expensive since it was in a very nice restaurant, but it was only $21 total!!

We have met many of the families that are also with our adoption agency (some will arrive tomorrow or the next day). Everyone is very nice and we are enjoying getting to know each of them.

We certainly feel like this part of our trip is a vacation, but we are anxiously waiting for the real reason we are in China....HANNAH!!!!