Saturday March 17 - Leaving Beijing

Hi - we're back online!

It feels like a week since our post first thing Saturday even though that was only yesterday morning. For those catching up, please note that Bryanna posted a message just before this one.

Yesterday, after our luggage was picked up for the train at 8:30 am, we had breakfast and then the Thompsons just had a lazy morning organizing for our departure. After the kids had baths, they took a rest and zoned out with the latest Cinderella dvd while the adults got ready ;-)

At 2:00, we set out for the Temple of Heaven. On the way, we took a quick pass by Tiananmen Square which we never had a chance to enter this past week as the National Assembly (situated on the square) was in progress. We took some good pics from the bus, though...

We spent the afternoon at the Temple of Heaven - this is the large park where the Emperors used to pray for a good harvest. The children all enjoyed exploring this lovely place...




Here's a wonderful shot of Ma Rui and Cassidy...




And we arranged to have our first (and only) full group photo taken there...a group of Americans gave us a hand and picked up our 20 or so cameras to help Ma Rui take the shots...




Then after our last dinner as a full group (as the first of our families was heading out to their daughters' province), the remainder of the group headed off to the Beijing train station. You do not know how grateful we were to have Ma Rui leading us through that challenging endeavour. As one of the dads said, "there are a gazillion people here!" Every child was either attached to a parent or was encircled by adults. This has been a wonderful blessing on our trip - all the families look out for all the children - surely putting in motion the "it takes a village to raise a child" philosophy. When we finally reached the train and were ushered by Ma Rui into our various sleeping compartments around 7:50 pm, it was a huge relief.




There were so many of us that, except for one room on the very end, we took up an entire car of sleeping compartments! However, the two families of 5 (ours included) found that it is just not possible to fit into a 4 berth sleeping compartment and still hope to sleep. Ma Rui managed to acquire 2 more beds in the next car but they were not together. She took one, and one of the dads took another. I moved in with one of our group who only had 3 in their compartment and it all worked out. The kids had a blast - a real adventure - and most of them slept right through the night until we were approaching Xi'an at 7:00 in the morning. The adults did not have quite the sound sleep but still really enjoyed the experience.


The remainder of today's adventure will follow in the next post in about half an hour...

One last thought, I found myself very sad to leave Beijing as it will likely be many years before we return. While I plan to bring the girls back to China in about 5 years, we may not include Beijing on that trip and this city holds so many wonderful memories for me.


Farewell, city of Emperors!