Lost in time

Oct 4th- we saw Tian'nenemenen Square, Forbidden Palace, and Temple of Heaven today. Basically these were very important places to the Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. I'm not sure who the Mings and the Qings are but they had some huge houses. They used lots of symbolism in their architecture and artistic design which I found most interesting. Apprently lots of other Chinese people think this is interesting as there were lots of Chinese tourists there. Lots of them. Very very many.

Of all the things that you might think would cause a major mishap- language barrier, money, directions, indigestion- we ended up missing our train to Xian because we failed to translate the military time posted on our train ticket (20:28 is 8:28 not 10:28)- Lt. Yi will be ashamed.

This poses a problem considering that even if we had caught the train to Xian, we weren't sure where to go to next. We found ourselves now a day late to a tour that was confusing to follow already. As we searched for a hotel for the night in an unknown part of Beijing- many locals offered to take us to a hotel. We've learned in touristy places that many people that come up to you are trying to scam you. We decided to follow this one local through series of dark alleys to this hotel that he kept saying, "Just a little bit further". Some of beijing looks peaceful and friendly, this part did not. Every other shop in this alley appeared to be a hair salon with girls inside watching TV. I thought this was sketchy, Forrest reasoned that, "Well there ARE a lot of people that need haircuts here." We didn't know the culture enough to know if this is OK or if we were about to get jumped.

Somehow we arrived unharmed to this hotel that appeared mysteriously out of these alleys of death and the guy wanted to take us up to the room. For some reason the lady at the front desk did not need any sort of deposit from us. We reluctantly got into an elevator for this local guy to take us to our hotel doom. I honestly thought when the doors opened on Floor 2 that we would be done for. As the doors opened and we did not get ambushed- we decided not to get out of the elevator to see the room. We went back down and left the hotel very quickily. Ultimately we found took a cab to a hotel near where we had stayed the past few nights and it worked out just fine. God has certainly been with us this trip and everything has worked out when we weren't sure what to do or where to go. Many thanks to those who have been keeping us in their prayers.

Hope everything is great in the states- keep me up to date!