Day 101: December 14. Action Packed

The bakery run was more efficient this morning as we knew where we were going! And it was a little warmer today which helped.

We ate at Lucy's, enjoying the warmth of the baked goods, tea and hospitality before saying goodbye to Lucy, who flew back to the States for Christmas this afternoon, and thanking her profusely for her generosity.

We walked to a neighborhood park, called Ritan Park, and walked around. We saw the whole city there! People were practicing Tai Chi, playing hackey-sack, exercising on these little metal machines, stretching, playing cards, singing, playing the flute, playing badmitton...and that was just the adults! We had a great time just walking around and people-watching. Although we did play hackey-sack for a little while with one of the groups of adults. The park itself was beautiful too...there were pagodas and frozen ponds, hills and rock formations, evergreens and stark trees all around. We were struck by how alive it was, even in the dead of winter!

Although it would have taken a very long time indeed to tire of watching Beijing go by at Ritan Park, we had to get a move on to keep to our busy little schedule. So we walked to the Dongyue Temple. This was a smallish complex, but it was jam-packed with things to see. The draw of this particular temple is that it has dozens of halls with statues of deities and demons who deal with certain situations, according to Taoist Buddhists. For example, there was the Hall of River Gods and Goddesses, Hall of Mountain Gods, Hall of Eternal Damnation, Hall of Controlling Demons, Hall of Justice, Hall of Adultery etc etc. It was really interesting!

We rushed home to make tuna sandwiches for lunch, then moved out again to go to the Olympic complex. We saw the Bird's Nest and the Bubble, as well as some other stadiums that neither of us recognized. Alicia bombarded Karla with questions about which building was which, but we ended up not knowing much about the complex. Oh well. It was cool to see anyway!

Next we were driven to the Lama Temple, which is a huge series of Tibetan Buddhist temples. We saw many large statues of the Buddha, and a couple of interesting exhibitions on Buddhist relics.

Feeling lucky, we next headed to the Weekend Market again. Tis the season. And we can't come home and just go to the mall after being around the world...let's just say we made some good deals!

We got dropped off at home and said goodnight to our driver, Mr. Li. Then we did a quick turnaround and walked toward a theater to try to get tickets to an Acrobatic show. Success! We had a little more than an hour before show time so we had a quick dinner at a sushi restaurant (which was delectable!-thank goodness because it was the only restaurant around) then headed back to the theater.

The 'Flying Acrobatics Show' was awesome. It had a little something for everyone. The hour was packed with dance numbers (very corny), mind-blowing acrobatic tricks and body contortions ((but seriously. How do they BEND like that? (and usually while balancing on something moving)), and our favorite, the poses. After every athletic or acrobatic feat, the performers would strike a pose. It was hilarious, probably mainly because, despite our choice to get the cheapest seats, we were literally front and center (VIP) and close enough to see the makeup and the goofy expressions caked on their faces. Fantastic.

After the show, we took a cab home. We weren't quite tired yet, so we enjoyed some ginger tea and an awful Christmas movie, courtesy of the Hallmark Channel (hey it's China...we'll take what we can get!) Right before bed we saw Michael Phelps on Leno...we saw where he won all 8 of those medals today! Good timing us!
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