After resting up for dinner on Friday we met up with some friends and went to the mall just down the street from our hotel. It is 6 floors high, full of stores and restaurants. There are a lot of familiar stores like H&M, Forever 21, Aldo and an Apple store for instance. And tons of unfamiliar stores that looked just like ones at home. There were so many choices for restaurants it took is a while to decide on one. Joseph saw the Golden Arches though and was set on chicken nuggets and french fries. So we took some to go and he ate while we ordered our food at the ramen house.
They had these great big panda bears at the entrance where Joseph had some fun.
On our way back to the hotel we pass by the Catholic Church. There is a large gathering space in front of it and apparently it was being used fora giant Zumba class that night. Our friends whose room overlooked that area said in the morning there is a tai chi class going on and another said they saw a salsa dancing class there the night before. We saw this man writing characters in the tiles. Wish I knew what he was writing.
Here is the view of our hotel at night.
Saturday morning we woke up, had breakfast and headed straight for the bus to go to the Great Wall. Because it was a Saturday all cars are allowed to drive on the streets (during the week even numbers drive on some days and odd cars drive on other days). Because it is also Fall, lots of people flock to the area of the Great Wall to see the changing leaves. And apparently there was some sort of holiday too which meant even more people were on the roads. So the typical 45 minute drive to the Great Wall took almost 3 hours. Thankfully there were a lot of things to see along the way.
Joseph wanted me to take a picture of this building...I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact it's still under construction.
We even got to drive by the former Olympic village. We saw the nest.
And the water cube where all of the swimming events took place.
So this kid gives me a giant cheese smiled while we are driving and I notice his two lower front teeth are pushed together, so I wiggle them to see what was going on and sure enough they are both loose!!! You can see the bigger tooth pushing up on one side. Looks like we may get a visit from the tooth fairy while we are here!!
And another random McDonald's. They are not as prevelant here as they are at home but you can still find one if you want. KFC and Pizza Hut are even more prevalent here. We haven't checked out KFC yet but Pizza Hut is a fine dining experience and the pizza tastes much better here than at home.
By the time we got to the Great Wall it was lunchtime so we decided as a group to have lunch first. We stopped at a kind of tourist trap that specializes in colliaser. These are similar in design to a porcelain vase but it is made of copper. 
A pot being painted. It takes 6-8 layers to get the final product.
They fire the pot after each layer of paint.
End product
After lunch they gave us some time to shop before getting back on the bus to drive the remainder of the distance to the Great Wall.
As we got closer to our drop-off spot Joseph kept saying we found the Rocky Mountains!
After getting off the bus we got a group picture. We are traveling with 8 other families. This all of us but one who chose not to come because they have already been a few times before.
Where we parked there was an "easy way" and a "hard way" to get to the Great Wall. Letting the boys lead meant we went the hard way.
So up, up, up we went. It was very similar to the incline from back home. The steps were uneven. Some were really tall, some very short.
Along the walls were the love locks we had read about. Couples put a lock with their names engraved on them along the wall symbolizing their forever love. 
As we made our way up through the different towers the views got better and better.
Our happy guy. Four years old and climbed the Great Wall. Ok, well the parts he wasn't on Ronnie's shoulders he climbed :)
Each of the watchtowers had a stairwell up to the roof. They also all mostly smelled of urine (sharing so you can have the full experience ;)!!!!)
Can you tell how much Joseph loved it?!
And the prize for best constructed English sentence goes to...
Carla and I on our way up to one of the last watch towers.
Typical boy, by the time we reached the last watchtower of the section Joseph no longer cared that we were on the Great Wall. He was more interested in playing with his school bus!
From the top you could see so many other sections of the wall throughout the mountain.
It took us about an hour to climb the whole way up. We have no idea how many steps that was or how high we actually climbed but it was a good workout. I still can't believe Joseph did most of it on is own. And I can't believe Ronnie was able to do some of that with Joseph on his shoulders. I live with supermen :)
Last night we were supposed to go to an acrobatics show but it ended up taking us another 2 hours to get back to the hotel from the Great Wall. As it was we left the hotel at 830am and didn't get back until 6pm so instead of the show we opted for Pizza Hut! Joseph barely even made it to dinner though. He pretty much passed out as soon as we were seated so I took him back to the room while Ronnie waited for our food and brought it back to us.
This morning, Sunday morning, we had a very early wake up call to head back to the airport and fly to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, where our kids are all from. We arrived at the airport by 730am and said goodbye to our reps here. Joseph didn't want to leave Jolene so we made sure we got one last picture with her :)
On the way to the airport you could tell the smog was pretty bad. We could look directly at the sun...
And watching the planes on the runway it was obvious it was a bad day for smog. 
Our flight to Zhengzhou boarded right on time so we got on a big bus, packed in like sardines and rode to our plane. We loaded on the plane and sat and waited. For over an hour. Then heard someone get on the loudspeaker and say something in mandarin and everyone got up and off the plane again! When we got back to the terminal there was this sign...
While we waited another family in our group discovered a play area for the kids.
Before we found this we had been improvising with a stairwell turned slide...
We waited for about 4 hours before they began boarding again. It was so different than in the US where people would be up at the desk demanding answers and throwing fits over missing their connection or being late. Everyone was just chill about it here. They even fed us a meal right there in the terminal about an hour into it. And when we were boarding the buses again to get on the plane they stopped Ronnie and made him sign some paper and then handed him 300 RMB! So much better than a voucher for a free drink or hotel room or $ toward your next flight.
But we were finally on the plane headed to Zhengzhou...Matthew's home province!!
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