Beijing Remembered

Two years ago today Matt and I landed in Beijing. It was the first leg of our trip to pick up Emma. We spent 16 hours on a straight flight from Chicago. I remember thinking how clean the airport was in Beijing. Of course, the Olympics where to take place there in a just a couple of months so everything was spotless and all the workers spoke English. It was like a trial run was happening or something. We walked down a long hallway with skylights and then everyone was funneled through a strange looking gate. I have since found out that it was a thermometer of sorts. They were trying to gage temperatures for H1N1. Crazy! We met up with our Holt guide who took us to the hotel. The drive there was amazing. I had read all about how big Beijing is but until you are there you can't really grasp it. The buildings are so modern and the architecture so incredible. We both instantly fell in love with the city, people and country.

Once we got settled into the hotel we decided to venture out and find a market. We are huge fans of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel and had to find the market that Andrew filmed the Beijing episode in so that Matt could eat something bizarre. And, oh he did...seahorse on a stick! Fortunately, it was just a short walk down the street from our hotel. There was a huge Olympics souvenir store where we picked up lots of goodies. Matt bought some Narnia books in Mandarin at the bookstore. It felt like being in Time Square. Huge billboards of Kobe Bryant and the Chinese Olympic women's volleyball team lined the streets.

The thing I will remember most about that night though is the giant tv screen in the center of it all showing images of the devastation caused by the massive earthquake just a week before. People were standing on the sidewalk, eyes glued to the screen. I remember seeing people crying. It was so heart wrenching. I just kept thinking...this is their 911. So many children killed because of a lack of building codes and laws. So many parents' left to mourn the lose of their "only" child. The government forced them to pin all their future hopes on this one child and now in away the government had taken that away, too. The pain. My heart was just breaking for those families.