Passport Day

Well by the time 5:30 rolled around and school and work was out for the day, the protest crowd grew tremendously outside our hotel.  It's hard to see the enormous number of people in the picture but the sea of people in the middle are the protesters, the blue under that are the police, and the green under the blue are actually the military.  Needless to say, we stayed at the hotel for dinner...but won't be doing that again because it was way too expensive! By the time we went to bed the numbers had died down significantly and things ended peacefully.  Today we awoke to no military or police presence and streets being cleaned up.  I hope for the rest of our time here, this is the case.

The pictures below the protest picture are pictures of breakfast this morning.  Brayden is always freezing and so he told the waitress to seat us outside.  It was a bit muggy but a great view.  You can feed the koi fish in the pond and they see you coming, they were huge.  Brayden has gone a bit crazy with the food and will eat and eat until almost sick and will talk to the waitresses in Chinese and order things.  This morning he asked her for coffee.  COFFEE.  He of course didn't like it and didn't end up drinking it.  For lunch we headed out to Pizza Hut and ordered a pizza (they have spaghetti, shrimp, fried rice...a variety of things really) and Brayden again spoke to the waitress and asked for iced coffee.  COFFEE.  This time however, I asked her what he wanted and put a stop to the ordering freely.  I had allowed him to do so up to this point but he now needs to start learning he can't just do and get what he wants.  Silly kid.  So we ended up with pizza and Pepsi.  He ate only 1/2 of a slice of pizza, I'm guessing because he isn't use to that kind of food, and drank his Pepsi like the rest of us. 

After lunch, at 2pm, our guide picked us and the Scott's up to head over to Trust Mart (Walmart) and that place was huge.  It was two levels and we were able to purchase 10 cup of noodles, a 12 pack of a variety of soda, a 12 pack of water, and some oreos all for $11! After that we headed to the police station to apply for Brayden's passport which took some time.  When we finished there we headed back to the hotel and had dinner in tonight. 

Last night Bradley fell asleep around 7:30 and the rest of us by 8:30.  Unfortunately I was awake at 2:30 this morning and Bradley at 3:00.  Even though we did not get up out of bed, we stayed awake trying to fall back asleep.  Mark of course has no problem with sleep.  By the time Bradley and I get use to the time change we will be heading for home and have to deal with it all over again!  So...it is currently 7pm and we are finding things to try and stay awake as long as we can so we can hopefully sleep well tonight.  That proves difficult when you are in a hotel room with Chinese television.  Bradley and Mark are playing Uno and I'm trying to hold my eyes open typing this, Brayden is playing DS (which is another thing we will be limiting soon). 

Tomorrow we have a free day and our guide Sarah is taking us to the park.  I really enjoyed the park last time because there were lots of Chinese dancers and tai chi as well as old buildings.  It is raining here right now and is scheduled to rain until next Wednesday so hopefully it stays away some to allow us to enjoy the park.  8 days until we return home....