Great days, bad nights

We’re not sleeping much. To be precise, Charlotte is not sleeping - at night anyway. The last two nights we’ve put her down @ about 8:00, and she has woken up at 10:00, midnight, 3:00, 4:30 and then at 7:30 she is up for the day. I know I was belly-aching when we first got her about the midnight feeding and the 5:30 am wake up….but now we’d give anything for those days. We think that teething is the problem, but who the heck knows? It could be all the disruptions in her life. It could be the new food she is eating (which also seems to be giving her a touch of the runs). It could be teething (her second tooth seems to be on the cusp of breaking through). It could be that this crib is really uncomfortable…. I could go on, but you get the idea.

So tonight we turned to that old standby – drugs. We gave her a dose of Advil before bedtime. It if is teething that should do the trick. If not, well, I guess I’m up and down again tonight. It is times like this that I really wish Steve could pick her up.

So that was our night…let me tell you about our day. It was much more fun.

Today we went to Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven. Both were amazing.
We didn’t actually DO much at either location except walk around, but the architecture and the people are so interesting that was enough. To be honest, I would have loved to spend a day just people watching.

At Tiananmen Square, there was a very large and visible police presence. Guards in military gear marched through the crowd, police cars drove around and our guide told us that some of the men who were innocently flying kites were also likely military personnel. It is hard to express the size in words just how vast the space is. Our photos don’t do it justice, here are a couple links if you want to check out more background.
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/tiananmen_square/
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/tianan.htm

Next stop was the Temple of Heaven. Again, I could spend some time typing out the history, but in the interest of getting to bed at a decent hour I’m just going to provide a link: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/heaven/
Luckily we are visiting it in modern times, because apparently women were not previously allowed to enter.

In both locations we were really struck by how the local people used the space to just generally go about life. Both spots were clearly hang outs for retired types – particularly the Temple of Heaven. The Temple is surrounded by a huge park, and it was filled with people singing, ballroom dancing, playing ball games, dominos, cards, you name it. Again, the people watching was half the fun for me.

I can’t wait to come back a second time with both girls when they are older so that we can visit these sites again.

At the Temple we had our first real mob scene with Charlotte. We’ve gotten lots of looks, questions etc, over the last week, but we’ve never been swarmed. The first group just crowded around the strollers and asked questions. The second group was different/strange – they all wanted to take photos – but only of Charlotte. (usually Steve and I are asked to pose as well.) It was pretty funny to see the paparazzi lined up in front of her.

In the afternoon the retail extravaganza continued with a return to the Pearl Market and a second visit to my good friend Mandy. Got myself a nice little bauble…..: ), and we bartered our way into some good deals on clothes, and other little trinkets. Ah yes, and we bought a new, giant suitcase to ferry all this junk home. If find the bartering to be fun, but it is exhausting. The basic premise is this: the vendor gives you an inflated price, you counter with something offensively low like 20% of what they’ve suggested, and if you have done well then you settle at between 25-35% of the original ask. All this comes with a good deal of theatre, of course. Since there are so many stalls selling the same things, it is very easy to just tell the vendor you are leaving to buy elsewhere. This threat is highly effective, and sometimes they will even chase after you. I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “Hey lady, come back” today. While negotiating for the suitcase, one vendor actually chased Steve into a clothing stall at the other end of the hall yelling a price at him, while he yelled back something lower. (NOTE: at this point there was a discrepancy of 80 yuan, which is a little over $10. So really, it is about who is going to blink first. Ultimately they settled at 50 Yuan)

Time to sign off and get some rest before getting up again….