December 3, 2011

Today, Saturday, was another full day of traipsing around Beijing.  We traversed Tiananmen Square (very cold), forayed Forbidden City (forbiddingly cold), supped some suspicious soup (not cold but also not good), rode a rickshaw (open air vehicle--cold), studied silk worm production (very productive, not very cold), and dined with dear friends at a typical Chinese Mexican restaurant (warm hands, warm hearts--yay!).  Did I mention it's a little bit cold here?

Lest you think that we came here solely to stock our photo album with pictures of just the two of us at all the major attractions in Beijing, these two days are actually built into the trip for a purpose. 1. to give us a chance to get our sea legs back (a.k.a. get over our jet lag) and 2. to give us a chance to better understand the country and culture of our daughters' birth. It would be hard to hop off the plane after a 13 hour flight to a 14 hour time difference and immediately welcome a brand new child--not impossible but not ideal. So this is part of the preparation. Tomorrow we will fly to Guangdong province in southern China (dust of those old maps and find it) and then Monday is the big day!

This evening we had a special double date with my dear friend Megan and her husband Mark.  Megan and I have been friends since last century when we were students at Wheaton; back in the olden days.  She was the inspiration for naming our daughter Megan.

Dinner was lovely (and warm) and was interrupted only once by the donnybrook at the table beside us (you'll also need to dust off your old dictionary).  That's right, friends, a brouhaha was brewing right next to us when a man complained loudly to the waitress about a certain screaming child at another table.

Long story short:  Screamer Father confronted Complainer, gestures were exchanged, nostrils flared, there may or may not have been some flying salsa, argument got heated, Screamer Father advanced, Complainer didn't back down...what's going to happen?!  Toe to toe, fingers pointing into eyes.......(insert super hero music).............David and Mark sprang from our cozy booth, with a steely-eyed calm demeanor, they wrenched the two men apart with super human strength, hurling each one against opposite walls.  Then they high-fived each other, transformed back into an attorney and a school administrator, respectively, returned to our cozy booth and went back to their chimichangas.

It was all over so quickly that Megan and I only heard some yelling, saw a blur, and noticed a bit of perspiration on our sweet husbands' brows.

True story. Except for the part about the chimichangas. We'll tell you more about it when we get home.