Adventures In A Rickashaw

Bonnie and I decided to take turns blogging at night or in the morning because it is diffifult and time consuing to type on the kindle keypad. A few nights ago I kept falling asleep inbetween words. Hopefully this morning my typing will be better and my thoughts will be clear.

We started out yesterday by learning Tai Chi in the park. There were street vendors everywhere,and you cant say yes to all of them the best way to not have to tell everyone no (they do not take no for an answer...in fact talking to them only encourages them) is to act like you do not see or hear them. In between learning our cool Tai Chi moves we had shopping opportnites.

The temple of Heaven is is a beautiful place. It is a Buddist temple and there were a lot of people playing in the park. The parks here seem to be the senor citizens' playground. They sing, dance, and play hackie sack. They seem to make the most of their well deserved retirement. The buddist temple in six hundred years olf. It was built after the forbidden city.

We went to a a silk factory and saw how silk was make. These really are not factories but more like a government store. We get a demo and then we get a sales pitch. The prices are pretty high.

After the temple and silk shop we rode over to Hu Tong and got on to rickashaws. This was fun going done the narrow allies of the old part of Beijing. I can imagine that the rickashaw drivers have the strongest legs around. They drove us to a local womans house and she fixed us lunch. Lunch was fantastic !We ate in this woman small home that had two bedrooms a living room and an adjacant kitchen. This was a very humble home but with the best food of the tour. It was nice to have some home cooking. After lunch we gave the host gifts. I gave her some homemade apricot jam and grape jelly. These were things that I was sure that were not made in China

The flea market was fun I bought some fun things and one lady even sai0d I was a good barterer and that I made her tired. I really dont believe her because when I compared prices with the other tourist on the bus our prices were pretty similar.

After dinner we went to a acrabat show it was amazing what they could do. I was grateful to be the one watching and not the one trying to do it. There were jugglers, jumproppers and people ho jummed through hoops while building a human prymid.

Today we get a free day. We can go where we want to go and eat what we want to eat. I think we are planning on visiting the Lama Temple goig back to Hu Tong to hang with the locals and then go to anothe flea market. Tonight we want to go to a place called night street or snack street. We are excited for a little freedom