China - Our Adventure Begins

My oldest sister, Paula, lives in Beijing, China. This year I got to go to China to visit her and her husband, Carl. I met my Mom, Merlene (sister) and Tim (brother-in-law) over there for a two week visit. Dave joined us for a week as well. We had so much fun! Paula and Carl have lived in China for 4 ½ years, so they knew all the best places to take us to give us an in-depth feel of China. We got to see the tourist sites like ‘The Nest’, the Great Wall, several markets, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven etc. but more fascinating to me was the places tourist don’t normally go like the local markets, farming communities, the Taylor shop and then how the x-pacts live, with maids, drivers, American toilets even being able to attend the LDS Church, American branch. They have 3 branches in Beijing; two American one Chinese. The American and Chinese Branches by law are not allowed to mix, even in social situations. I will talk more about this a little later. We also ate at a lot of Chinese restaurants that were GREAT!
I have broken our adventures into sections, instead of waiting until I have the whole thing written up, I will post it in sections. Hope you will enjoy reading about our adventure in China.